The Frankish Reich

And you'll perhaps be surprised to learn that I believe Joe Biden in 2021 and Ronald Reagan in 1981 are at approximately the same stage of mental decline. In other words, some slippage is apparent, but it's not so severe as to impact their respective abilities to perform their jobs (with the assistance of huge and skilled advisory staffs). Clearly by his second term Reagan had progressed beyond that point. Will Biden by 2024-25? Who knows? Decline in mental acuity is a given, whether some of dementia is diagnosed or not. But the rate of decline is different in different people, and I know no way of predicting it. Having said that, I don't think it's a good idea to be electing men (and the decline comes earlier in men) in their 70s (even worse: who will be in their 80s before their term ends) to the most important job in the world.

I just did say that, noting that the even worse scenario is the "unelected, unvetted" policy maker, which obviously was directed at Hilary and Bill. But let's be honest here: Nancy Reagan, while a forever loyal spouse (and from what we've heard, inveterate grudge-holder against those she thought wronged Ronnie) was kind of an idiot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Quigley#:~:text=Quigley was born in Kansas,chief of staff Donald Regan. "Quigley was born in Kansas City, Missouri. She was called on by First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1981 after John Hinckley's attempted assassination of the president, and stayed on as the White House astrologer in secret until being outed in 1988 by ousted former chief of staff Donald Regan."

George W. Bush 75 (which kind of surprised me ... he looks good!) would be a better source of outrage. I think Google didn't feature a doodle on the 75th anniversary of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, something far rarer than the 100th birthday of a dead person. Really, First Ladies (or Gentlemen, when we get them) ought to be basically ignored. This is something that I really dislike in American politics, the focus on the First Lady as some kind of unofficial running mate or even worse, unelected, unvetted policy maker. Dennis Thatcher, American turns its lonely eyes to you.

Coalitions are never stable in American politics. The best analysis I've seen is from Sean Trende: https://newrepublic.com/article/106507/lost-majority-future-government-sean-trende "once majorities are formed, they immediately start falling apart. He attributes this to a couple of things that seem uncontroversial, if not banal: “roads not taken”—the many choices parties have to make as they reach various forks in the political road—and “contingency”—the tendency of events like wars, recessions, and domestic unrest to impact parties’ success or failure. Together, these factors make majorities of any kind, even so-called realigning ones, highly unstable. Trende concludes his analysis by looking forward, considering factors that might consolidate a Democratic majority in the future—for example, the rise of the Hispanic population. He has multiple objections to the argument that Hispanics will underpin a lasting new Democratic majority coalition, starting with the slow rate at which this population is affecting the voter pool and the possibility that its growth rate might decelerate over time. But his chief point is the contingent nature of this group’s support. As with other immigrant groups, he argues, it is likely that support for the currently favored party will decay over time. What looks good from “straight-line projections,” he cautions, is likely to fall apart ..." Nothing unexpected here, at least not by the the people who are something other than cheerleaders for one side or the other ...

It would've been quite amusing exactly 2 years ago for someone to say that Josh Allen will be in the top 3 QBs in the NFL by 2020. EDIT: such is the nature of punditry. SI ran a now famous cover story when the Astros were the worst team in baseball (by far) c. 2014 - "Your 2017 World Series Champions." If they had run a cover story with the caption, "Expect the Red Sox and Cardinals to continue to dominate their leagues for the next 3 years" nobody would've remembered it ... even if it had come true. It's fun to think about what happens to teams that load up on high draft picks. Sometimes it does all come together at once. Sometimes.

Maybe only Earl Campbell in my memory was his equal (Jim Brown was before my time), but he sustained that level for a much shorter period of time.

Nary a mention of the Dalai Lama's 86th today? Kevin Hart's 42nd? Nancy's astrologist KNEW they'd do this to her but she was powerless to stop it. I am outraged!

My family moved away from Buffalo just before that time. It wasn't easy being a little kid trying to follow Buffalo sports teams from the opposite coast! Football wasn't so bad with its once a week schedule and the spotlight on OJ. But before the internet - before even espn - being a Braves and Sabres fan meant trying to figure out what the hell happened last night by reading a box score or two-line recap in the next day's newspaper, provided the game finished on time to make the next morning's paper.

Starting with the idea that this is just plain stupid … a little explanation of what may have gone wrong. I used to spend a lot of time (too much time) with baseball stats. Baseball is the sport most amenable to these types of stats - it’s a team game composed of individual one on one performances. The standard way to project a player’s future performance is to look at his past 3 or 4 seasons in a weighted average. Something like 40% most recent year, 35%/25% for the 2 years before that. The weightings change as we learn which curve fits better, but the concept remains: it has proven to be the best concept for projecting future performance. Period. Football isn’t baseball. It is much more of a true team game. But if you’ve got a baseball analytics background, your tendency is to use the same tricks. Take a weighted 3 year average of Josh Allen and, well, that rough first year will drag him down, even if only weighted at something like 20%. Should we focus only on his most recent season? No, that would be a mistake too. Should we then go all subjective and say that I just feel that he’s only scratched the surface of his potential? That too is silly. Long way of saying I just ignore these types of lists in football. One that is based on real value (Expected Performance - Salary) does have some value because it tells us the relative value of young/pre-free agency players vs. free agent veterans. If Josh ranked 20th or so on that list with Trevor Lawrence above him, well, that list is worth arguing over. This one isn’t.

I’ll just say this: I am astounded by the level of detail of the memories of some of my fellow Bills fans. I barely remember Terry Miller, and I am quite sure I must have watched this game (I was still in school and I lived in the NYC market at the time).

We must never flush the deep state thread! Too much demonstrably wrong insanity there.

This is why it wasn't easy to find a lot of information on this election for those outside NYS. "Minor city elects socialist mayor."

Simple Pole sez ... dis boy gonna reggress!

^this Whether that's a "real" regression or just a statistical blip, we have to recognize that there's always some degree of luck and the stars aligning just right when a guy has an MVP-caliber season.

I make it a point not to get involved in these culture war things. But ... really: https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/billie-eilish-apologizes-on-instagram-for-racist-language.html Billie Eilish mouthing along to words by Tyler, The Creator when she was about 13 or 14, including a slur against Chinese (Tyler non-Creatively rhymes it with "drink"). Billie falling all over herself apologizing. And Tyler? The guy who wrote (and spoke) the slur Billie mimics? Nobody is calling him out. Google "Tyler the creator racist" and you get a bunch of results about Billie Eilish, some results about Tyler calling the Grammy Awards racist for creating an "urban" category, and non at all about Tyler saying something racist 10 years ago, in a song that tons of young people have listened to (I know; I've got teenagers). I keep thinking we will hit Peak Stupid and that will be a turning point. Maybe we're there? [by the way, I don't think either Eilish or Tyler are racists. I'm not saying Tyler should be canceled. I'm definitely not his target demographic, but like I said my household exposes me to some things I ordinarily wouldn't be exposed to, and I gotta say he's seems like a clever guy with a good sense of humor. But dude, come to Billie's defense here! It's on you]

I love both of 'em. I mean, I love our guy more than the guy who beat us, but that's what makes it great: we will get him next time. I'm a Bills fan, but I'm first and foremost a fan. This is a great time to be both a Bills fan and a fan in general. Two fantastic talents. It's Marino and Kelly. It's Peyton and Brady. Enjoy it!

I gotta admit it ... this is remarkably entertaining for hard core Bills fans. Nicely done.

This is a fun thread. It wouldn't be so much fun if we were still in the midst of the playoff drought ... And I'm convinced. After having been a proponent of the Kyle Orton Crumble, I now have to admit that The Music City Debacle wins. Bad call or not on the forward lateral, these desperation kick returns literally never work. Stanford-Cal. Bills-Titans. That's it. It was ridiculous, preposterous, stunning, deflating, never should have happened even if the "lateral" had been a clear forward pass. It would be the "worst play" in any team's history, at any level.

I always love a good DR thread bump. Needless to say, some of this hasn't exactly aged well ... see the "Red Headed Patriot Mom" comment about "nobody is leaving" the Republican Party to join the Dems.

Can't believe it took until Page 8 for this one to get mentioned. It works for me as the worst. Not a meaningless game, not just bad luck or inability to succeed on a tough play (wide right), not the absolute bottom point of a lost season ... no, this one was a gutless way to squander a real playoff opportunity.

1. The Bills scouting staff is to be commended on seeing the potential in Teller when they drafted him in the 5th round in 2018. 2. He was, and is, a run-first guard. 3. He was drafted in the same draft that brought us Josh Allen 4. For obvious reasons, protecting Allen (and giving him some comfort in developing into more of the efficient pocket passer he has become) became paramount. Teller, a developmental player particularly when it came to pass protection, was ill suited to that task after Allen's difficult rookie season playing behind an atrocious offensive line. 5. In retrospect, it would have been nice to have kept him in reserve. But he wouldn't have played much for the Bills in 2019 for the reasons stated above, so who knows if he would have emerged as the very good player he is today if we hadn't traded him to the Browns. 6. None of this matters to the fans here using this topic as a proxy for continuing some boring longstanding dispute about Josh Allen or Josh Rosen or whatever.

I've always thought that this is the best model for a new league, basically something like the minor leagues are to MLB. Players assigned to the minor league affiliates on developmental contracts, with separate ownership but negotiated affiliations. We will generally ignore this new USFL, as we did the XFL and many others before and after. We wouldn't ignore something like the Myrtle Beach Bills with a roster including 20 or so players under Bills developmental contracts. The NFL Europe experiment was getting toward this, but it was aimed more at building an American football audience rather than sustaining offseason interest in existing U.S. fans. I think there's enough Christian Wade obsessives here to drive TV ratings. Even I would watch. (Well, a bit ...). Maybe the NFL just doesn't need the complications (CBA, etc.), or maybe they're afraid of antitrust implications.

My draft grade: C. But that's just because it seems average, and C traditionally is average. With grade inflation rampant, I guess we could call it a B. I don't obsess over drafts, and I'll admit that Rousseau is the only Bills pick I'd actually heard of before this week. And he seems like a fine pick at 30. That's part of finally being a good team - everyone you pick comes with a question mark when you're no longer picking in the top 10 or 15. I guess my sole disappointment is with what the Bills did in relation to the competitive cycle. Beane gets a partial pass because he made the Diggs deal last year. I understand the value of not mortgaging the future by doing it again (this year it would've probably meant packaging picks to move up in the draft rather than acquiring another expensive star), but I also have the nagging feeling that the window of opportunity is wide open this season and maybe next season. The AFC East will get better, but probably not just yet. The Chiefs are still the champs till somebody in the AFC beats them, but in retrospect they were incredibly lucky during the regular season with lots of very close wins, and they were badly exposed by Tampa in the SB. Other teams to fear in the future (Chargers?) seem a year or so behind us in the cycle, and others (Ravens? Titans?) strike me as having moved just past their peak. So from a "future is now" perspective, I probably would've targeted a more immediate home run hitter even at the cost of losing picks in future years.

Well, 7 kids? That's on him ...

True. But I think sometimes we get so used to talking about these crazy athlete salaries that we lose sight of how much money that is. He played one year in the NFL, and presumably collected more salary while out (legitimately) injured. So that's $730,000 by the age of about 24. Adjusting for inflation, looking back at my 20s, it took me about 9 or 10 years to earn that much in total. And that came with a pretty significant student loan burden. It's a tough, physically demanding job with a really short lifespan. But it is handsomely compensated.