Ghost of LL

I agree 100% with everything you just typed. Joe Biden is undoubtedly the best president of my lifetime. And to be honest, it isn't even particularly close. There are things I would wish had been done better. But the list of accomplishments in 3.5 years is pretty remarkable. And now it's time for him to do one more thing for his country--stand down. Give a gracious speech from the Oval about how it's time to pass the torch to a new generation. Channel JFK's First Inaugural, except instead of being the torch-recipient, speak as the torch-passer. It would breathe new life into the campaign. It would give the Democratic candidate an unbelievable advantage of not just being not old, but also of being the basis for excitement for the future. It would defeat Trump. It would save the Republic.

Brother, I'm with you. There is no way I am not voting for the Democratic candidate for President--or any other office--in November. But at the risk (or certainty) of being labeled an over-reactor, I am 100% certain that if Joe Biden is the nominee then we will lose. And I am equally certain that we will lose the House and the Senate. Because if you watched that debate with anything other than the most partisan of goggles, you saw a man who frequently could not complete a coherent thought. It was the worst debate performance by a presidential candidate since we started having the damned things in 1960. That's not an exaggeration. It was the worst. It was worse event than Trump's performance in 2020, because at least he played to what his base wanted to see (i.e., an obnoxious loudmouth with an aversion to facts and truth). And we can make excuses all day. And maybe some of those excuses have some basis in fact. But they're not going to be persuasive to people who currently need to be persuaded to (1) show up to vote, and (2) vote for Joe Biden. "He had a cold"; "he's busy with a real job"; "his advisors prepared him badly"--perhaps all of those are true. And it won't change the mind of anybody who isn't planning to vote for Joe Biden today to vote for him in November. And if the Democratic Party can't get its shit together and get a nominee with an actual chance of winning, then that indicates a complete failure of the party structure. And that's going to have real down-ballot consequences. I appreciate @linux and @troph observing the obvious--that the Republic depends on the outcome of this election and we need to work to defend it. But if the Democratic Party--including its various officeholders--put the Party's power structure and need not to cross an incumbent president above saving the Republic, . . . well, I just don't know what to tell you. As a final thought--my reservations with Joe Biden in 2020 were entirely wrapped up in his failure to run in 2016. Anybody who knew anything about politics knew that Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate, but that Joe would've won in a landslide over Trump. But Biden didn't run because he was sad about Beau's death. I mean, ok. I get it. That's a valid thing. But at the same time, the Republic needed you in that hour, and you didn't answer the bell. And now it's the opposite. The Republic needs Joe Biden to stand down. But he's looking for all the world like he's going to put his personal interests ahead of the Republic in 2024. And in so doing, once again hand the presidency to Donald Trump.

The mics are really low.

Jesus Christ, they both look ancient.

Fuck yeah, man—if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

I would sure think so.

The goal kicks straight out of bounds are pretty terrible.

Frl frl.

This is amazing—Mexico is going to get eliminated in group play in THAT fucking group.

Yeah, asshole—because I texted it to you first.

If you're not watching right now, Ukraine is in yellow and Belgium is (uncustomarily) wearing light blue. In the other game in the group that is going on right now, Slovakia is in light blue and Romania is in yellow. And that's just really cool of all of the teams concerned.

I just think it's really cool that both games in this group are light blue against yellow. Obviously, that was a purposeful scheme worked out by the four squads. And while it does make it slightly hard for me to figure out at a quick glance which game I'm looking at, I'm totally here for the underlying messaging.

It's not "dastardly." It's just bully behavior. It's the behavior of the neighborhood bully when he sees the little weird kid in the neighborhood rolling around on a new bike. The little weird kid is all proud of his new bike and is letting everyone know that it's the best and that he's going to win every bike race from now til forever. What's the bully going to do? He's going to shove the little weird kid down into the mud and take that bike. And that's why aggy left for the SEC and why they're talking Big 10 now. They're getting bullied, and have been the victim of bullying for a century-and-a half. It's like they moved to a new school to escape the bullying, only to have the bully move into their school the next year. And so now they're faced with the prospect of endless nuggies from now until the end of time. And you would feel bad for the bullying victim, except . . . well, they kind of deserve it. There's the theory of pre-karma. Actually, I don't know if there's such a thing as "pre-karma" at all. I'm not a scholar of Hinduism. But there should be. Essentially, the Universe knows that were aggy ever to win anything of substance, that they would be such insufferable assholes that karma could never fully account for their fuckery sufficient to bring the Universe back into balance. So to prevent that, the Universe doles out pre-karmic retribution, both to punish on a preemptive basis, but also to prevent aggy from winning and becoming the infinite assholes that would bring about unresolvable karmic imbalance. I think that's how it works. But I don't know. Am I a guru? No. But maybe.

I just can't right now. It's amazing. I don't think this could have been done in a way that was any more publicly humiliating to aggy. I'm trying to think of how, and I really can't come up with it. They manage to get themselves to the biggest stage in college baseball, and of course they lose. And before the spotlight shifts, we enter from off-stage and step directly into the spotlight, rob them and knock them down, and then walk off the stage as the spotlight follows us, never to return to aggy. Aggy is left laying on the ground. In the dark. Crying. But that's the public part. Equally amazing is the "private" part of it--what they're saying in their conversations among themselves. They've actually worked themselves into a conspiracy theory whereby Schloss has been a secret Longhorn agent who . . . and I'm still trying to understand this . . . got them to the National Championship series with the intent . . . again--I'm still trying to understand this . . . of losing. But aside from the incomprehensibility of it all, think about the psychological trauma this evidences. They genuinely think that we're in a position that is so superior to them that we would (and, more importantly, could) pay off their coach to throw a national championship. It's insane. But it's in equal part just . . . really sad. And by "sad," I mean fucking awesome and amazing to behold. I just can't right now. It's too much. Even for me. I mean, it's like if you gave Robert Downey Jr. a roll-aboard full of cocaine in 1997. I mean, he would want to do it all in one sitting. He'd probably try to do so. But really, it's just so goddamned much that even I can't do that much aggy misery in one night.

Aggy. Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away. EXCEPT, our face isn't going to melt off at the end of the movie. You hear that, aggy--no face off-melting for us!

I fucking cheer for Three Lions' success, and I have to agree with you. This is just a slog.

Pooooor aggy.

Isn’t that both offside and a handball?

These predictions are very strongly premised on the presumption that people who tell pollsters that they're going to vote Reform are actually going to do so on polling day. I'm very skeptical. The same pressures that entrench the two-party system in the United States are present in the UK--maybe stronger. And in the same way I don't think for a minute that RFK Jr. is getting 12% of the vote, I don't think Reform is going to get anywhere near 20%. You already see the two-party machinery swinging into action this weekend, with the Mirror openly calling Farange a "Putin stooge." I mean, they're right; he is. But that's the Conservative Party talking and working to get its voters back in line. And ultimately, I think they'll be largely successful.

In Russia, there is no separation of church and state. The Russian Orthodox Church is explicitly and emphatically an organ of the Russian government. And its "priests" are government agents who are frequently directly employed by the FSB. So they not only disseminate government propaganda, they also inform on their parishioners (and, in an area like Dagestan, probably on other members of the community). So don't think of a Russian Orthodox priest as akin to a Catholic priest in Austin. He's much more analogous to an imam in Saudi Arabia.

Oh, Jesus--I didn't think it was possible for me to cheer against aggy tonight any more than I already was. But between the prospect of getting Schloss in here countered with the threat of Vitello coaching my team (he may be a great coach, but he's also a fucking tool), I'm going to be cheering for the Vols every much as though it were the Horns out there.

Counterpoint--it's not up to the Turks to impose onto English-speakers a diacritic that is completely foreign to our language. I don't think it's necessary to spell "São Tomé and Príncipe" with all those little squiggles, even though I understand they're proper in Portuguese. It's enough that I address the country as Sao Tome and Principe, which is how it is styled at the United Nations. Perhaps I'd give more of a shit if the Turks would address my country as the United States of America rather than the "ABD." And I understand that they want to call Germany "Almanya," because that's just in keeping with Constantinople's Roman heritage. But unless the Turks are going to start calling Norway "Norge" rather than "Norveç," I'm really kind of uninterested in their histrionics over the deal. Final funny note on all this--the United States Department of State has adopted the "Türkiye" spelling, but also made clear that the pronunciation remains the same. That is, American diplomats don't adopt the overwrought Canadian-ified "Turkey-eh" pronunciation that you heard on the broadcast. And I just personally think that's really funny. edited to add: These days without a morning match to distract me from these little flights of irrelevancy really suck.

Oh, you chocolate-eating watchmakers thought you were going to beat die Mannschaft. But you’ll get an outcome as neutral as your foreign policy.