Guy Chamberlin

I will agree with you that so far Joe Biden has been a pleasant surprise and hopefully he can ram more through with this fragile majority. But it is hard to watch half of America fall into a full fledged conspiracy cult, while the GOP does everything in its still considerable power to ensure they can still rule America as a minority, or at the very least f#&% it up for everyone else. And honestly the GOP response to Liz Cheney is morally grotesque. I've seen a lot in my life, but I've never seen this country so literally insane. So yeah, I"m "ruffled." Keen viewers will also note that this thread is called What Is The Future of the Republican Party, so that's why people are "harping" on it, chief.

I was feeling like the U.S. has come out the other side. My whole family is vaxxed, our friends are vaxxed, we're hanging out mask-less and eating at restaurants again. Then I look at the stats, and the U.S. is still racking up 700/800/900 deaths a day, numbers that were not considered acceptable a year ago. And there's India, going back to mass celebrations and creating the worst crisis scenario yet. I'm going to hang on to feeling good about my family, my kid going back to school, and our really safe county, but I have a feeling that COVID fatigue doesn't mean Covid is done with us.

God I wish I cared enough to review your posting history.

Trap game!

You literally just posted your dismissive opinions of Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Liz Cheney, none of them politicians you get to vote for. Funny how you think.

Say what you will, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney made themselves hugely unpopular with their own party — like censure and death threat unpopular — and will never be embraced politically by the liberals,, who at most appreciate them for taking an extremely obvious moral stand. So that's not really "shifting winds" or "daddy's little girl" or "playing to the chattering class" stuff, Archy. It's people risking their very standing in order to do the right thing. Funny how that ruffles folks like you.

As mentioned, several prominent Republicans stepped up to concede the validity of the election results and try to shut down the fraud and conspiracy bandwagon. Then their home offices started relaying the death threats and emails they were getting from the actual voters, who took a page from their leader and declared any criticism to be disloyalty. The danger to the party is losing voters, and at the moment the quickest path to losing voters is to tell them to stop believing the lies. Agree that it's probably not going to work out for them. I'm certain the not stupid ones gather in private and shake their heads. There's not a good strategy at the moment. Unfortunately autocracy feeds on inaction.

Exactly. Your inability to admit to falsehoods is the root of the problem.

No one would have predicted that a candidate who said and did what Donald Trump said and did could ever be elected President of the United States. Then having revealed himself to be even more vindictive and disturbing as President, convince 10 million additional Americans to vote for him in 2020. In the window between the November election and the January 6 fallout, prominent Republicans clearly distanced themselves from Donald Trump and the fomenting Conspiracy Wing, only to discover that the voter base remained Trump loyalists. As someone just pointed out, the party is officially losing its s#!t about Lynn Cheney and Mitt Romney, and strangely willing to ride the crazy train with MTG, Matt Gaetz and Calamity Bobert. Does anyone think a moderate Republican stands a chance for the GOPs 2024 nomination? Or that a Greene is more at risk to be primaried than a RINO? I don't know why you have such a hard time admitting you're on the morally bankrupt side of history.

Better arm. No question. Not better decision-making, the QBs #1 job. Tons of strong arms out there that never sniff the NFL.

I've always enjoyed offenses where the tight end may be the best and most dangerous receiver on the field. Would love to see that happen this year. Makes the WRs job easier, too.

Remember, it's not just the NFL that has its doubts. A healthy third year Adrian Martinez was replaced with a Freshman by his own coach just a few months ago. Frost was looking for someone to execute more quickly and decisively, bring a little more energy. So will the NFL. I think Martinez responded really well to the demotion, and I'm feeling good about him getting super-focused to have the best season of his career. The NFL is obviously possible, but if I had to put real money on it, I'd say no. Tanner Lee is just an example of what the NFL is willing to overlook if you're a pocket passer of a certain height. Adrian still checks a lot of the wrong buttons. I think pro teams are willing to build an offense around super talented QBs who bring high mobility to their game, but they have to be outstanding passers with great field vision like Mahomes, Josh Allen, Kylar Murray, and Russell Wilson. They're much less interested these days in the traditional dual threat QB, and won't go out of their way for a QB who runs better than he passes. It's not really a knock to say Martinez faces the same NFL likelihood as Tommy Armstrong, Taylor Martinez, Eric Crouch, Scott Frost, Tommie Frazier, or Turner Gill. Nebraska really doesn't recruit or develop pro-style quarterbacks.

I think Adrian will be unleashed for his last season here, and he's going to have some great running games. For the team to be successful, he needs to complete 60 - 65% of his passes and cut the interceptions at least in half. I think that's totally doable, especially in Frost's ball control offense which uses a lot of high completion short passes. But it's the classic college system skillset, and I don't think it translates to the NFL at all. Whether a straight up pocket passer or one of the new mobile QBs, you can't be missing the throws Adrian still misses. Even if it's windy.

You're right. I accidentally watched the 2019 Spring Game, with breakout performances by hungry running backs Jaylin Bradley, Brody Belt, and Austin Hemphill. I saw big play performances from a new crop of wide receivers, including Wyatt Liewer, Cade Warner, and Jaron Woodyard. Noah Vedral played well enough to push Adrian Martinez for playing time. In fairness, it was a beautiful windless day.

Also, punt coverage was awful!

Oh not this again.......

Spring Game is all about optimism, but I wasn't seeing it today. I know it was windy but it was also zero pressure and low stakes, and Martinez missed some simple throws, including the really predictable and safe out patterns that we over-relied on last year. You could also see wide open receivers 10 yards deeper, but he was locked in on his first look. Spring Game is a great place for a young back up to show a little dazzle along with the rookie mistakes, but I saw nothing to make me curious much less excited about Haarburg or Smothers, not like Tristan Gebbia who was a total baller his first Spring Game. WRs might be better, hard to tell. Same with the running backs, although Yant stood out a bit from the crowd. No idea what the defense is like --- QB pressure was a problem last year and it felt like the green jersey curtailed any aggressiveness. Sorry. I was honestly ready to get excited by the Spring Game.

Listen, I've grown weary of Don Lemon's deep sighs and incredulous outrage, and I can predict Chris Cuomo's take on each day's news cycle, and CNN blatantly and obviously skewed to Biden while earning ratings for it's reliable takedowns of Trump. For that matter, CNN often went out of its way to marginalize or outright demonize the progressive wing of the Democratic party during the primaries. But when it comes to facts -- the vetted, sourced, and traceable facts -- it's not even close to what Fox and god-forbid OAN and Newsmax are doing. C'mon, Scarlet Revival. At some level you gotta know how far your party has gone off the cliff, and how shamelessly you and your people spread the goofiest lies imaginable.

Sure. But per the bold: you seem to be choosing a single person making the broadest assumption to undermine the fact that mask compliance explains quite a bit, if not everything. And unlike the anonymous person you're citing, a lot of folks understand there are variables in play.

I'm a big fan of complexity, because that's where all the unsatisfying answers live. But for the sake of shorthand, the mask wearing thing isn't that misleading. India is a big country, and like America its behaviors vary by region and culture. India most likely underreported cases and deaths by a considerable factor, as have Russia, Mexico, and perhaps much of the world. Epidemiologists have been trying to figure out why high density populations with poor health infrastructures -- like India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and others -- had far fewer COVID fatalities than had been predicted, much fewer than Europe and the U.S. They're still a bit baffled, although one theory is that these populations had been exposed to previous coronavirus-related outbreaks that may leave a marker in people which makes the next coronavirus mutation less severe and largely unreported. But is this really that perplexing? "This is really serious. You need to wear masks" = Cases go down "Congratulations! Cases are down. Let's go back to the way things were!" = Cases go back up. When India went back to the way things were, it meant huge throngs at public gatherings. For a population barely vaccinated. I believe the forensics on Sturgis South Dakota last summer suggest a celebration that was way too early, and it may have cost thousands of lives.

Did you have any experience with Iridium? They were a really well-funded launch about 25 years ago, with their own satellite network, able to promise cell phone connection to virtually any nook or cranny on Earth. It was pricy, but not unlike other first adopter technologies. My brother bought some stock in it, and we found out that satellite systems and personnel are really expensive to maintain while waiting for paying customers to step up. Out of business in just a few years.

You know perfectly well that had Donald Trump proposed the same thing (minus the last pro-union bit) Republicans would have hailed it as bold America-first leadership.

Yep. The play is to promote the fact that China is poised to overtake the U.S. in alternative energy, not simply an ideology but intellectual property and patented technology that will make billions for private industry. The last administration was literally tilting at windmills.

I get that Bill Kristol couldn't follow his conservative ideology into the Age of Trump, but when did he become such a reliable liberal flamethrower?

You're adorable when you try to pretend this s#!t is debatable.