The Frankish Reich

So you're saying it's the 46 year old ...

I know Tua takes a lot of crap on this board, but he passes the "with or without you" test - the Dolphins' offense is clearly much, much better overall with him at QB.

You mean until Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady come back home to N. Cal? I'm hoping they continue on the Russell Wilson path this year, but there is no way SF mortgaged the future with plans to stick with Jimmy G. or Trey Lance. Some kind of move is coming.

I think he will. Rypien is a perfectly adequate limited skills/smart/risk averse QB who gets rid of the ball quickly - think a less accomplished Case Keenum type. Rypien will have a Taylor Heinecke/Bailey Zappe moment on Sunday and Broncos fans will have a collective meltdown. Wilson has been bad, Hackett has been worse, the entire offense has been putrid. But I really don't get the schadenfreude thing - Wilson committed 100% to Denver, did and said all the right things off the field, and just so happens to suck on it. I get that Seahawks fans turned on him, but it's not like he's trying to suck with the Broncos.

Kid Rock, Canadian Millennial Edition.

If only Trump had done the same when the courts (including the Supreme Court) shot down each and every one of his arguments. Victor Davis Hanson used to be a respected professor of ancient history and a thoughtful conservative critic. He is now nothing more than a hack, saying there is absolutely no meaningful distinction between challenging the counting of votes in the courts and then conceding when they decide against you vs summoning an angry mob to try to stop a ministerial process from being completed AFTER your court challenges have failed.

The decision seems correct under existing legal rules. But the rules have to be changed. In our federal system the courts are not allowed to issue “advisory opinions.” If Congress passes a law of dubious constitutionality, or if the President implements a policy that runs afoul of the Constitution (and I believe this one does), there’s also no “taxpayer standing” to challenge it. You’d have to find an individual plaintiff or plaintiffs to show that they are being harmed by the policy. “My taxes may go up in the future” is not enough. It’s not just Biden, although this is a pretty extreme executive action. Trump diverting appropriations to building his wall was another. In our system, Congress is supposed to have some control over how taxpayer monies are spent. Maybe we need a doctrine (or even constitutional amendment) to allow the courts to strike down unconstitutional policies based on a certification by a certain percentage of Congress, etc.

True.

True. Brady is a Michael Jordan type. Most of the greats are just fine with being remembered as such. When you hear stories about Jordan he’s never been happy unless he’s competing and (in his mind, even if not on a field of play) winning.

Or when Tom Brady takes over at QB next year. Imagine the double TE lineup when Gronk and Kittle line up on opposite sides for Tommy.

I'm starting to think that way too. But it would be strange in the modern NFL for a QB to lose it that quickly (and at "just" 33). We saw Cam Newton drop off a cliff, but he was a different kind of run-heavy QB. Peyton Manning somehow went from All World to one of the worst QBs in football in the summer between his age 38 and 39 seasons, but he had previously had serious neck surgery and maybe there was an expiration date on that. The more typical decline today is what we see in Colts "one last run" QBs: Rivers and now Ryan. Guys who maybe can't carry a team the way they used to but who still can have big games many times over the course of a season. Maybe Joe Flacco too, but he was hardly in the same league as the other guys even at his peak. So I'm gonna say Wilson will rebound, but with nothing like the confidence I had before the season started.

Well ... how many? Honestly, don't opine on economics if you don't understand the basics.

I’m sensing an 11-8 thriller tonight.

We are talking about theory here. There’s two prime determinants of inflation/deflation: fiscal policy and monetary policy. You blame “Biden” COVID spending bills (really a continuation of Trump COVID spending bills) for inflation. In other words, you blame fiscal policy. Tax increases are part of fiscal policy. More tax money = less money in the economy ceteris paribus. You say there is no such thing as ceteris paribus. That’s probably true. But that’s a different argument. So call our other poster naive, fine. But don’t call him irrational when you are the one being irrational. Or maybe just the one in need of an Introductory Macro course (they are available online)

Well, no. Because if you believe fiscal policy has been the primary factor causing inflation then you necessarily believe that a rise in taxes (all other things being equal) has deflationary effect. And a cut in taxes has an inflationary effect. See Truss, Liz. From the NYT just now: “The market’s swift, withering verdict on Ms. Truss’s tax-cutting agenda shattered her credibility, degraded Britain’s reputation with investors, drove up home mortgage rates, pushed the pound down to near parity with the American dollar, and forced the Bank of England to intervene to prop up British bonds. That repudiation, measured in the second-by-second fluctuations of bond yields and exchange rates, mattered more than the noisy departures of Ms. Truss’s cabinet ministers or the hothouse anxieties of Conservative lawmakers that ultimately made her position untenable.”

Q. Which Party expressly associated itself with upholding “Judeo-Christian values?” Which 2020 Presidential candidate did? A. The Republicans. And Donald Trump. (Not Joe Biden and the Democrats.) Oh, and Vladimir Putin too. It’s an elite group of godly men and a few special women. When Republican candidates and various dictators who wantonly bomb civilians stop holding themselves out as defenders of the Christian tradition, I will gladly stop referring to a certain candidate holding an upside down Bible in one hand while the other hand is free to grab em by the you know what.

Then it would also be "impossible" to be a Roman Catholic and to: - support the death penalty - support the use of contraceptives - support same sex marriage - support in vitro fertilization, since that necessarily results in the elimination of excess embryos - support strict limits on immigration Etc, etc. The reality is that the Catholic Church takes many positions on issues of morality and public policy, and it's the classic big tent - I'd say the vast majority of Catholics respect Church leadership's voice on issues of morality, but do not accept each and every specific position of the Church. Donald J. Trump is such a Christian that he saw fit to pose with "a Bible" (Q. Is that your Bible? A. It's a Bible) in front of a church, but he still bangs hookers whenever he can and grabs women by their nether regions ... I don't think the Bible was too keen on those things either.

What I’m saying is this: aggregate demand is now driving inflation rather than a supply shock. Hey, I’m not the guy whining here about good cuts of steak and line-caught fish driving my grocery bills over $500! So to stay in character (and echoing another commenter here): Yes, let them eat Hamburger Helper.

Disney is “owned by China?” It’s 20 largest shareholders are all boring US institutional investors like Vanguard ETFs and various pension plans. So this is obviously untrue. If the tweeter means it’s true in some purely metaphorical sense, well, he really ought to explain. Here it sounds like “The NBA recognizes that China is a huge market and it is hesitant to do anything to piss off the CPC.” Which is true, I guess, but it’s hardly the same thing.

Im not seeing the austerity thing (yet). Instead, it seems to me that discretionary spending is still pretty ridiculous as people continue to emerge from the COVID lull and spend those inflated stock market gains. Example: for years we had taken a quick January break to one of the great resort hotels in Arizona. Pre-COVID prices: maybe $500/night. Now? $900/night. I draw the line somewhere closer to the first price. Yes, inflation, but let’s not go all Yogi here and say “nobody goes there anymore; it’s too expensive.” It is expensive because demand is still ridiculously high with most weekends sold out or almost sold out. They charge $900 a night because they can afford to without leaving rooms empty. Same thing with flights. Someone here commented that his grocery bill hit 500 bucks because nice steak is now 20 bucks a pound and fish is 15. Take a step back to get perspective: if people are really feeling the hurt, wouldn’t they scale back to, oh, I don’t know, ground beef at 6 bucks a pound? These are the spending patterns that Jerome Powell is looking at, and the Fed is committed to rising rates until aggregate demand softens.

I watched the Frontline Flynn show. It was good. He’s gone completely batty. The producers show how the batty tendencies were always there, but I fail to understand how this nice Irish Catholic boy suddenly turned into an evangelical, apocalyptic prophet of the fringe “religious” conspiratorialists. He now resides in that fertile (and apparently lucrative) ground that monetizes a special blend of true paranoia and utter bs.

Well, that whole Durham thing was a big never mind. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2022/10/18/us/politics/igor-danchenko-russia-acquittal-trump.amp.html I’m starting to think that maybe Trump won’t be “reinstated” as President after all.

Gordon isn’t playing because he can’t hold onto the ball. Jeudy also started poorly in Denver with lots of drops, and he hasn’t exactly earned the right to be pissed off about not being a primary target. Having said that (and having watched way too much Broncos football the last few years living in Colorado), it astounds me that basically the same personnel on offense performed better with Teddy Bridgewater at QB last year. It wasn’t a good offense, but it looked more like a modern NFL offense than the crap show Hackett and Wilson have put together so far. They are in way too deep with Wilson to even think about moving on from him. That’s why I see Hackett getting the axe pretty soon (bye week?), the defensive coordinator taking over, and a new offensive coordinator coming in from off the street. It really is that bad. With this defense, even a marginally competent Teddy Bridgewater offense would have them right in the hunt.

Bye week firing. Problem is the Broncs don’t have their own Leslie Frazier - the experienced former HC who just exudes competence. Boring competence, but competence. Hackett was a joke 9 years ago in Buffalo and he’s still a joke today. I expect a new interim HC + an outside offensive coordinator coming in.

I love these resurrected threads. At least amidst all the nonsense we have these words of wisdom. But he USED THE SEARCH FUNCTION!