Bartimaeus

There are areas where Hillary and Trump share way too much in common for my liking...but extrapolating that to them somehow being the same seems like a case of losing the forest for the trees, though. It's interesting to think about an alternative scenario where Hillary is president, the Democratic party continues to refuse to move left, and Republicans still control both the House and the Senate, though...and knowing Mitch McConnell (who has since openly admitted that his "no SC appointees in an election year" stance was a lie), the Supreme Court is still at a 4-4 split (as in this scenario, Kennedy is never coerced to retire).

I just hope that the majority of his base is sensible enough to realize Warren is the closest to him, and not Biden...if he drops out at all, that is.

I looked at a chart of runs, and we're actually doing O.K. against runs to the right and up the middle - it's runs to the left (both inside and outside) that are disproportionately successful. Tyron Smith being out might actually be very helpful for us in containing the run game.

As Gromnir pointed out, high ankle sprain is a nebulous diagnosis. From what I've seen in fantasy football, it's also something that usually cripples a player for the rest of the season even after they've "recovered" - takes until the offseason for it to heal fully. As an aside, you know a game should be either great or terrible if fans of both teams are feeling pretty bad about their chances against each other, . (e): Also, Davante Adams is unlikely to play vs. the Cowboys, who is a bit of a Cowboy killer himself (at least, as I recall), so that should make you feel better...other players, including our starting RT, to be determined.

The jury decided the case in six hours, too, which is...all things considered, I think pretty short?

@smjjames: probably referring to this: https://www.inquisitr.com/5656541/donald-trump-mike-pence-conversations-ukraine-president-transcripts/

>the bears, as hard as it is to believe, blitzed less than all but two teams last year. When you can consistently contain the run and rack up pressures (combination of sacks, hits, and hurries) while only rushing 3 or 4, the guys that aren't going after the passer are dropping into coverage (and it also lets you successfully do stuff like have a QB spy the entire game against mobile QBs). Similarly, the Packer barely blitzed throughout the first three weeks this year (4th lowest rate) and got an insane amount of pressures (we were #1 - don't know after this week 4), which let us keep our defense in perpetual nickle and dime and make passing that much more torturous for our opponents. Of course, the Packers fell short in containing the run week 2 and 3, and the Eagles successfully abused that to all hell and made us look downright silly in week 4. But yeah, not having to blitz and still getting those pressures is a huge boon to pass defense.

@Gromnir Vikings @ Bears: I also expected the Vikings to play better given the injuries. Vikings seem to always play horribly at Soldier Field no matter how good those teams are, though. Chargers: They have so many bad and important injuries/absences that this is probably not as surprising as one might think. They did just finally get Melvin Gordon back, but they're a badly beat up team. Buccaneers @ Rams: Hell of a game. Thought for sure the Buccaneers were going to choke it, but they didn't. Packers @ Cowboys: If Rodgers plays amazingly at Dallas as he always does, we'll have a chance, especially if we get a score or two ahead quickly, which will play to our strengths for pass rush and pass defense. If, on the other hand, the Cowboys get ahead by a score or two early, I have to agree that it won't be very close.

Especially fitting, seeing as Roy Cohn was Trump's personal lawyer for a time.

Said some days ago that I wasn't sure what or how good this team actually was - well, there you go. Pretenders until further notice!

It's kind of incredible that he somehow keeps appointing people of at least some integrity completely accidentally and to his great detriment. A lot of people have worse integrity than you might think when it comes down to actually taking a stand against everyone else...but it turns out, some people are surprisingly better, too. Even total political appointees like Jeff Sessions somehow have had some integrity and refused to pledge their their total allegiance to the monster mash.

I wonder what the record for the number of times "alleged" has appeared in a single, coherent sentence before. That one's got to be up there.

lmao, that'll surely help his case

I think you'd have to ask Trump that, haha. What in the world was he thinking? And again, this is their heavily edited "memo", not even a transcript, so...this is the best they could spin it. Now I really want to hear the whistleblower talk about it... Like Nixon, it's only thanks to a whistleblower whose conscience was pushed too far that we even start really digging into this. It's a shame that whistleblowers haven't been afforded protected near as much as they deserve in recent administrations, including Obama's.

Official WH (edited and redacted) "recollections" (note: not an actual transcript - the top very clearly states it is a memo, not a transcript) of the alleged Trump-Ukraine collusion incident: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf Reading Trump's (...and, surprisingly, the Ukraine president's) ramblings is difficult, but this blasted memo does seem to confirm the worst. Zeleneskyy talks about cooperation between the Ukraine and the EU and how they aren't doing enough, then compliments the US by saying that the US is the one actually doing the most, then talks about buying weapons from us. Trump then segues from that particular point straight into "getting to the bottom of it" regarding the "Crowdstrike" issue. He also specifically mentions wanting the Attorney General (Barr) to call the Ukraine president and talk about it. Zeleneskyy sidesteps it with a whole lot of nonsense about diplomatic relations and having our countries get closer, and that any possible investigations would be done properly. Trump then immediately goes back to the Crowdstrike issue and mentions specifically Biden by name and looking into what he did or didn't do, and that he'll have Giuliani (his personal lawyer!) and Barr call. A little additional context for this is the President personally ordered the withholding of $400 million dollars of military aid to the Ukraine days before this call for unstated reasons. In other words...it looks and awfully sounds like he was using $400 million dollars of federal aid money as a bribe to dig up political dirt on a competing political candidate for campaign election purposes. And this is heavily edited and redacted "memo"...what in the world's not included here that they felt the need to release THIS rather than let the whistleblower talk? (e): Also, just a reminder that no-one has seen the full Mueller report besides the people responsible for redacting it...and the redacted version of that was already bad enough, too. Completely unrelated article titled That time Nixon released doctored transcripts during Watergate.

@Malcador Not at all: election season is coming and the impeachment process is long, and there are so many different angles to come at it between allegations of money laundering, emoluments, obstruction of justice, anything that remotely looks like collusion (like this latest incident), general behavior unfitting of the office... Clinton's impeachment died in the Senate, but helped on some level lead the way to the barest of victories by Bush a couple of years later. Democrats desperately need the presidency in 2020 or risk losing any semblance of control of the Supreme Court for a generation or two - they're going to pull out all the stops here. Getting impeached in the House will also thankfully be recorded in our history books, regardless of the Senate process, and based on the madness we've had to endure over the past 2 and a half years, I'm thinking that that is a good thing.

Wanted to pick a bone with that statement by GD as well, but I feel like we've gone over it so many times already that there was little point. Nancy Pelosi is formally opening an impeachment inquiry (today?). It seems her party + the latest corruption allegations have swayed her to act.

For whatever reason, Rodgers always plays like a god @Dallas (and hasn't ever lost there, including in his SB win). Hoping that stays the case, .

Too bad pay phones basically don't exist anymore - hard to do actually anonymous tips these days.

Similarly, Packers continue to win ugly games. Still winning, but still not sure if this team is actually for real.

Was taking out some trash very early morning today, and noticed how nice it was, so I decided to take a short walk. A few minutes later, I noticed that two creeps seemed to be following me around, decided to take a sudden turn into somebody's driveway and book it through their yard and hide around a corner there to see if they were actually following me. They were, though I wasn't able to discern exactly why. They reversed course back where they'd just been coming from once they realized they lost me after some looking around. This area has a problem with methheads and alcoholics, and I'm sure that it was a very early Sunday morning/very late Saturday night played into it. Guess I need to start bringing more than just a strong flashlight on walks now. (e): wordz

HoonDing's probably thinking "a job well done" there.

I'm being more cautious than most. The last two games have been pretty darned close (1-score games where we needed end-zone interceptions to essentially seal them - we could very easily be 0-2 now), so I expect this to be a relatively even game as well until our offense starts really proving otherwise. The beginning of seasons can be weird - some teams will often rattle off a few wins before falling off a cliff, while teams that started slow often self-correct and start to pick up steam. We'll have a better idea of who the actually good teams are in two weeks (not including the Patriots, of course).

I mean...not really, but maybe under certain/extreme circumstances? If I thought a person were advocating for and advancing some actually evil ideas and policies, the fact that it's over politics is kind of irrelevant, isn't it? I'm hardly likely to shed a tear for Duterte when he goes, for example, seeing as he has advocated for murdering people in the streets during his presidency, and that's over a matter of "politics". Being glad someone is gone is also not the same as being glad if they were murdered or something - as much as I despise Trump on a political and personal level, for example, I certainly do not want him to be murdered for a variety of reasons. I don't know specifically about David Koch, but I'm less concerned with the specific individual than I am with understanding your general reasoning here.