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Guy Chamberlin

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Everything posted by Guy Chamberlin

  1. The irony, of course, is overwhelming.
  2. Well if you're suggesting Gaza is another taxpayer funded war, does it follow that Americans want to pull the billions in weapons the taxpayers fund to Israel every year? At the moment that's the Far Left argument. I'm just wondering on the smaller, more immediate scale if there's more open and bipartisan criticism of Israel's prosecution of its Hamas/Gaza war than there was a couple months ago. If you're suggesting most Americans are too overwhelmed by other stuff to think much about Gaza, that's hard to argue.
  3. It did feel like this thread was going a lot more P&R than it warranted.
  4. Is it just me, or has the narrative slowly shifted to acknowledge that Israeli actions in Gaza have gone well beyond targeted reprisals and need to be curtailed? I see both media and politicians saying things they wouldn't have four months ago.
  5. Dementia aside, Donald Trump is a clinical narcissist of the highest order as demonstrated his entire life. It's not simply the arrogance, it's the delusional arrogance and inability to view life through the lens of anyone else. I'm trying to imagine a MAGA follower encountering this behavior in a boss, co-worker, client, friend, neighbor, or Democrat and not saying: what an a$$h@!e! Stay away from that loser.
  6. For me, it's that some folks have this same take for every single sport that involves a referee, including Nebraska fans convinced the conference is using the referees to punish the Huskers because they hate them. For a conspiracy theory to hold true you'd have to go deeper into statistical analysis than either of us probably wants to. Just going by the traveling video that started this, I'd point out that many of those players were not superstars, that some of those violations actually were called, and wonder aloud how many of those you'd find in the 200 possessions per game of every game played in the NBA. And it IS a funny video because the violations are so comically bad. I think you find the stronger argument in foul calls, where people have long claimed superstar treatment. Even then, after you find Giannis and Luka among the top foul shooters, you'll see a lot of the supposed superstars down the list, and a lot of less flashy players above them. James Harden and Chris Paul became notorious for their kick outs - where they intentionally made contact with a defender to get the foul - and while it was technically legal everyone thought it cheapened the game, so the NBA changed the rule. It's not even questioned in Warrior-land that the NBA's biggest box office star Steph Curry doesn't get the foul calls other players get, and that actually is backed up by stats. I love watching LeBron James go ballistic when he doesn't get the call, but sometimes he's right, too. Last year the refs ignored a blatant foul on James in what could have been a game-winning play against the Celtics. You could almost make the case that some refs like to bait the biggest superstar in the game. My guess is that every sports league reminds every referee crew that fans pay to see the players, not the refs. That's solid advice whether you're a business or a fan. Even then, there's enough adherence to the rules that every game in every sport grinds to a halt as judgement calls are analyzed for all to see. What's also good for business is when big market teams make the playoffs, and some fans are convinced the refs are in the league's pocket to make sure it happens. Which doesn't explain all the times it doesn't. I mean, what do the Knicks have to do, besides win a lot more games? What I like most about sports is that it's the only true Reality Show out there. The producers really can't control what will happen, and the results hinge on what individuals and teams pull off in any given moment. I can name 100 bad calls across my favorite team sports that will live in infamy, but it honestly doesn't occur to me to hate the League for letting it happen, much less to stop watching the games. Especially not in the NBA, which has the best commissioner of the bunch, a growing global following, and a huge influx of young talent playing the game at the highest level.
  7. That happened on President Benjamin Harrison's watch. Thanks, Ben. Although in fairness, America was pretty hopped up on the introduction of electricity and the modernization craze of the 1890s was really out-of-control.
  8. A lot of stuff doesn't make sense to me. But I was listening to an NPR political reporter, who follows this stuff for a living, and he admitted we're in a different realm now that doesn't subscribe to our normal political opinion polling and it's full of rabbit holes and unknowns. It's now identity politics and some stuff is not going to follow logic or projections.
  9. And since there are more Democrats than Republicans, the loss of moderate Republicans should seal the deal for Democrats, especially in swing states. So why is Biden losing ground in swing states?
  10. Since you think it's a slam dunk for Biden, I'd bet your house on it.
  11. I would like to learn more about these sports that do not consider themselves entertainment, and the foreign countries where great players don't become superstars, and where no one can find enough bad ref calls to create funny videos. I mean, I want to go back to James Naismith and peach baskets as much as the next guy, but I think that horse has left the barn.
  12. It's also cyclical. MLB tries new rules -- or blatantly juices the ball -- when they sense ratings and attendance is waning. Other things like launch angles and analytics-derived defensive shifts come from players and coaches looking for an edge. MLB went to the trouble of banning the infield shifts, which looked weird, but I don't recall fans feeling strongly about that either way. I think everyone but a handful of pitchers loves the new rule to speed up pitching. Someone pointed out that the new larger bases, which were designed for safety, would also shorten the base path by a few inches, and suddenly the stolen base average in MLB jumped by 40%. When more players start hitting .320 by ignoring launch angles for singles, that might reverse the trend, too. Watching MLB after the NBA season is over makes baseball seem really slow, but I like baseball, too. College and NFL football remain my favorites. Guess I'm just chock full of love and acceptance for team sports. That's how I roll.
  13. They're working with a pretty big barrel of chum, limited only by the imagination and unlikely to go away. Here's what I've seen from a small sampling of my conservative friends on social media the last couple weeks • Joe Biden's confusion, gaffes, and age-related issues will never stop giving • Joe Biden's history of criminal corruption is so well established it needs no specifics • Joe Biden's illegal immigrants are killing our beautiful young women • Zelensky and Ukraine are conning U.S. taxpayers and the Dems are helping them do it • Every trial facing Donald Trump is a political witch hunt, confirming the weaponization of federal law enforcement to prevent the rightful president from regaining his rightful office • This Trump Derangement Syndrome keeps liberals from admitting how much better the country was when Trump was president
  14. That's the 2008 shift in a nutshell. Obama came in promising national healthcare. Instead of the hot potato of Single Payer socialism, he offered the ACA, written and endorsed by private healthcare insurers, approved by Republicans since the Nixon administration, and successfully implemented by their own Mitt Romney in Massachussets. Republicans could have taken credit for pushing Obama to the center, embraced the ACA as their own, and bought into it at the state level, where the ACA would have immediately enjoyed a better economy of scale to pass on to the public. IIRC, they came up with the name Obamacare and undermined it at every turn as the socialism it wasn't. That's when the burgeoning Tea Party started showing up at local political speeches and fundraisers, accusing everyone left and right of putting us on the slippery slope to socialism. I think the Tea Party was a fairly organic movement, but Republican Leadership were thrilled by the show of resistance and quickly co-opted the Tea Party for their purposes. They thought they could use and control this wing, but the Tea Party and subsequent rightwing subgroups turned out to be more independent minded, and started relieving the party traditionalists of their duties.
  15. Did someone just ask me for a long post detailing my personal voting history? I'm pretty busy today, but here goes: I haven't really changed my voting pattern in 44 years. I may not have loved or even liked the Democratic candidates -- national and local -- but given a choice of imperfect platforms I would support the party that leaned harder into public education, international diplomacy, environmental stewardship, social safety nets, and civil rights. I was always fiscally conservative in my personal life, and learned pretty quickly that both parties talked a better game than they played, while working out of the same basic economic playbook and taking money from the same lobbyists. Attempts to define our economic well-being by Presidential administrations don't really hold up. That being said..... I was not a fan of Ronald Reagan at the time, and haven't really warmed to him over the years. I do believe that the Reagan Revolution locked us into a supply side mindset that even the supply side influencers from the Chicago School of Economics now admit had the opposite consequences. Still, Reagan felt human, and managed to take many positions that would have him labeled today as a shameless RINO. My first vote, in 1980, was for maverick Republican John Anderson. I no doubt talked s#!t about George Herbert Walker Bush, but I honestly didn't think there would be a life-changing difference between a Bush and Bill Clinton administration. In 1992, I voted for Ross Perot. I would rather have had a beer with Bob Dole than Bill Clinton, but I liked the Democratic platform better, and frankly a lot of conservatives were doing just fine in the Clinton years, despite Janet Reno's attempt to drop lesbian school teachers on unsuspecting towns from her black helicopter. In 2000, I believed George W. Bush when he said he was running as a uniter, not a divider, as his record in the Texas governorship seemed to support it. I had no qualms voting for Al Gore, but figured a Bush administration wouldn't be a jarring transition. I was wrong. It turned out to be a d!(k Cheney revenge tour, with Bush's lack of intellect demeaning the U.S. presidency worldwide. John Kerry was the Joe Biden of the 2004 election. Although he drained all enthusiasm from my vote, it was still a no-brainer. Some liberals today are tempted to rehabilitate George Bush based on his opposition to Trump and cuddly relationship with Michelle Obama, but we shouldn't forget how awful he was in his own right. As a Democrat and a liberal, I opposed John McCain and Mitt Romney, though I alway gave McCain points for integrity and a good sense of humor. He actually was a maverick, and I respect the rarity of that. It did not escape me that McCain was the lonely moderate on that 2008 GOP debate stage. I thought the leaked audio on Romney's "makers vs takers" speech was pretty telling and damning. But even in the moment I did not fear a Romney presidency would change much of the existing balance. He was a reasonable alternative to the right wing flame throwers. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and felt pretty good about it. Obama started losing me almost immediately, when he began appointing old school Democrat war horses to every position. Wasn't quite the hope and change I'd been hoping for, in many ways replicating the Bush administration on key policies. It should have been 8 years of relative calm as Obama proved to be far more centrist than the GOP claimed, but once Republicans seized on obstructionism as its one and only strategy, the national mood started getting uglier than ever. It was the early days of social media. That was part of it, and it hasn't gone away. I never cared for Bill or Hillary Clinton on an emotional level. Everything about them seemed practiced political calculation. She was no doubt enraged when Obama quickly overtook her in 2008, and when fringe player Bernie Sanders almost upended her machine again in 2016. I enjoyed that. But when forced to articulate her values and policies in places like Presidential Debates.....yeah. Hillary Clinton was saying pretty much what I believed in. Ignoring how we got there, I had zero problem voting for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, and didn't consider a protest vote for a second. In 2020, Joe Biden played the role of John Kerry, as mentioned. As I consider those last 44 years, I can honestly say that I've never seen anything like Donald Trump. Never seen an electorate speaking such gibberish. Never seen America actually jump the tracks before. Wouldn't have dared predict it, even during Republican administrations I opposed ideologically. I may have called previous Republicans racists, misogynists and xenophobes, especially if they were, but never considered them demagogues, fascists, toxic narcissists, and cult leaders. There is a difference and it's not that subtle. But on some level, perhaps, I envy the voters who adore Donald Trump. I have never felt that way about a politician in my life.
  16. You shouldn't be in any hurry to "get over" the attempt to overthrow a democratic election, or to stop fighting the GOP takeover by Trump's intellectually challenged sycophants and their dangerous agenda. It's the very core of What's The Future of the Republican Party. I've read your posts for years, including your mocking dismissal of Liz Cheney. If I were to sum up your positions, favoring strong conservative policies, rejecting personality politics, choosing articulate conservative candidates, and moving the party on from Donald Trump, Liz Cheney should have earned your support. But that wasn't you. I haven't forgotten Liz Cheney's voting record, or the larger Cheney legacy. As a liberal I can only say that when Liz Cheney is worried about right wing extremism, maybe we should all be worried.
  17. Tell you what, Mav. Give me a diversion you particularly enjoy, and I will carefully explain to you why you shouldn't like it. We could start a thread called Nebraska Football Is Not Football. It will contain observations just as valid and factual as your rant against the NBA. Oh s#!t. I guess we already have plenty of those.
  18. "the NBA is not basketball. It's a business meant to resemble the game of basketball." That's pretty darned cynical. And it begs the question why you'd even bother with an NBA thread, where a bunch of posters seemed to be enjoying that game of basketball. I've been watching the game for 50 years. It's still basketball. Really good basketball actually. Do you like college basketball better? Why? As for the traveling issue that started all this, it partly goes back to the high flying superstars who made the game so popular, but it probably has more to do with the influx of talented European players who played the game with an extra step -- the so-called Eurostep -- that U.S. players wanted to use as well. It was pretty messy for awhile, but they went to the trouble of rewriting the rule in 2019 to accommodate the Eurostep. It's also known as the "gather" rule, which lets you take a step as long as you are gatherig the ball. I'm not sure you can read the official NBA rules for traveling and think interpreting the "gather" rule in real time is easier or more relevant to the game than interpreting holding calls in football. They've also changed the rules in the NFL and MLB many times over the years, hoping to make it more exciting for fans. New Language In NBA Rule Book Regarding Traveling Violations October 1, 2019 See below for more information about new language in the NBA rule book that governs Traveling violations: The NBA Board of Governors has approved new language in the NBA rule book that governs traveling violations. The revision will not change the substance of the rule but will help eliminate the gap between the rule as written and how it has been applied in NBA games. The official NBA rule book will now have a section that formally defines the “gather.” The text of the rule will also be revised to provide additional clarity regarding how many steps a player may take after the gather occurs. The changes to the rule book are below: Definition of the Gather The following definition of the gather will be added to the definitions section of the playing rules: For a player who receives a pass or gains possession of a loose ball, the gather is defined as the point where the player gains enough control of the ball to hold it, change hands, pass, shoot, or cradle it against his body. For a player who is in control of the ball while dribbling, the gather is defined as the point where a player does any one of the following: Puts two hands on the ball, or otherwise permits the ball to come to rest, while he is in control of it; Puts a hand under the ball and brings it to a pause; or Otherwise gains enough control of the ball to hold it, change hands, pass, shoot, or cradle it against his body. Incorporating the Gather into the Traveling Rule The gather will be expressly incorporated into the traveling rule to clarify how many steps a player may take after he receives the ball while progressing or completes his dribble: A player who gathers the ball while progressing may (a) take two steps in coming to a stop, passing or shooting the ball or (b) if he has not yet dribbled, one step prior to releasing the ball to start his dribble. A player who gathers the ball while dribbling may take two steps in coming to a stop, passing or shooting the ball. The first step occurs when a foot, or both feet, touch the floor after the player gathers the ball.
  19. The other way to get entertainment is to have some of the best athletes in the world playing exciting games to the enjoyment of millions. I'm not sure where the NBA lost you, but if your cynicism runs that deep, I don't know what you're doing on an NBA thread.
  20. The next day RFK Jr. apologized for the ad, claiming it was done by a PAC without his permission. Kinda hard to believe, Bobby. It was strange but potentially brilliant to just recycle a nostalgic JFK spot from 1960. While I've been busy ignoring him, apparently his numbers have soared to genuine spoiler levels. https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=2802dad21c2aa82f&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS1064US1065&sxsrf=ACQVn0-tWgbaZrsTkgID1ESE8Z8xla02yA:1709145094465&q=RFK+super+bowl+ad&tbm=vid&source=lnms&prmd=nivsbmtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjlmebR1c6EAxXo6ckDHQ39D3kQ0pQJegQIChAB&biw=1307&bih=675&dpr=2#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:cb0b40af,vid:Sk73BxOq_Ss,st:0
  21. If you can find people who accused Romney and McCain of being racist, women-hating xenophobes, you won't find them calling them great guys now. By your own admission they seem reasonable only in comparison to the man you voted for twice.
  22. Where does that confidence come from? You could say that the NBA thinks traveling makes the game more exciting for fans, or that they're trying to protect certain favored players from calls given lesser players. But the evidence doesn't really confirm that. The evidence does suggests different ref crews have slightly different styles of calling games. And occasionally individual refs have individual beefs with individual players. They get reviewed every game. If you miss too many calls, you don't get to be on a playoff crew. Here in Warrior-land, we point to how Steph Curry is constantly fouled but gets fewer calls than any superstar in the NBA. I'm trying to weave that into a conspiracy, but can't figure out how it works or who it serves. And according to LeBron James, no player in the NBA is more victimized by refs than LeBron James. It may be like holding in football. Supposedly happens on every play, but the game would grind to a halt if you called it every time.
  23. Any other year you'd tell the losing candidates to drop out, it's over. But there remain 9 long months and multiple trials for a 77 year old Donald Trump who is going more senile and filter-less with each appearance and tweet. It's not the worst strategy for Republicans to remain Republicans and just hang around in case things implode.
  24. There are about 500,000 possessions in NBA games a year. They get it right often enough. When they get it wrong we get to laugh at it on Shaqtin a Fool. There were some issues with looser traveling calls during the Allen Iverson era. Actually seems a bit better now. NBA moves faster than NFL or MLB, closer to NHL. I don't know any sport that doesn't have a ref problem, given that we only notice them when they get things wrong.
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