gehringer_2

I think the ego stroke on that one isn't so hard to see, how it turned into such a fiasco is a different question altogether! I'm with you on having no clue about the fix on NC. If you think you are in trouble, you don't put all your eggs in one basket - you spend 'em around because once you go somewhere the marginal value of another event in close succession in the same place can only fall. If you think you are winning, go where you can pick up some additional margin? So he's convinced himself he owns the upper midwest and NC would be the cherry on top? I suppose that's a possible take.

And Gore also never learned how to take credit without sounding the the kid in class everyone hated. There is an art to it. Listen to Obama 'take credit' for leaving Trump a great economy and compare it to Gore trying to get credit for being a big technology backer with the faux pas "I invented the internet". All that and he still should have been elected.

yes and no. Why did Gore distance himself from Clinton?- because he made a judgment that Clinton was going to hurt him. Now that may have been 100% the wrong reading, but he never would have made it all if Clinton hadn't dug his own hole so much deeper than he had to. Gore was married to a woman that campaigned against pop song lyrics - the Gore's were not big fans of sex and violence culture.

doc is really running behind for the physical.

which is also the great irony in Clinton's case. He could have told the truth at the grand jury, the public would have forgiven him anyway, there would have been no impeachment, Gore probably beats Bush and Bret Cavanaugh is still a second tier republican lawyer. People underestimate that you can salvage a bad situation more often by doing the right thing than by doubling down with another bad one.

This is the 14th Presidential election I have voted in, and Trump's win in 2016 was not the only time I voted for the loser but it was probably the first time I was really surprised by an election outcome. I had argued a lot on the old forum that the Dems were whistling past the graveyard on Hillary's negatives but I still expected her to pull it out. So I am willing to say again that I will be surprised again if Trump wins this - everything I think I understand about political fundamentals says he should fall short - but since it's Trump and I mis-read him once, I can't say I have any certainty level at all.

It's one virtue of how long and arduous a US campaign is - it is harder, though still not impossible (Trump in '16) to hide who you really are while being out in the public that long. I don't agree with him, but Tim Alberta's whole premise in the Atlantic article that someone posted up thread is that if Trump had just trimmed his sails and gone along with what Wiles and LaCivita wanted him to do, he could have insured himself an easy win - but he couldn't be someone else for that long.

I don't know how he could have lost. Who didn't want to be spared Crucifixion on a cross of gold? (Isn't Frank Baum riffing a little on those gold/silver controversies in "The Wizard of Oz"?)

don't know if he was thinking it for the Lion's sideline or just whoever was on his headset but it sure doesn't look like he said anything loud enough to be heard all the way across the field so basically just an empty gesture if that's even what he said at all.

and this has been part of the problem as well. The 'gotcha' journalism that grew up - mostly after Watergate - with every political reporter trying to be Woodward & Bernstein led every trivial kind of indiscretion being blown up in the media into something it wasn't. Like the boy who cried wolf, someone like Trump comes a long and to many people the carping just sounds like the same old media **** they figure they don't need to care about.

that's the critique of index funds; good for the investor, not always so good for the market.

I think Fontes sort become a caricature of himself at the end, but I give him a lot of credit for figuring out how to win with a team that always had a lot of weaknesses once you got past Barry. If Fontes had been coaching for a Brad Holmes built team, I don't think his name would be a joke in Det today. Of course that might be true for almost any coach with the good fortune to coach a Holmes team!

LOL - I'd never heard that. Werner is priceless.

Maybe it's a place he has a donor willing to pay for the venues..... .....just sayin'

Primaries aren't the same - they never speak to more than a small minority of the population and they often only represent a pol trying to learn how to do the thing. (Harris already a classic example of apparently having taken a lot of good lessons on how not to campaign from her primary dud) Biden has never gone to a GE and lost, incl City Council, Senate, or Pres.

The other thing which sort of sits in the background because you can't really measure it is just that it's very hard in American politics to win an office you've run for and lost. There is an underlying 'loser's' bias against you. Now granted the fact that Trump won before losing takes away some of that, but I think there is still going to be the basic "he's old news" sentiment percolating below the conscious level that works against him with the low intensity/late breaking voter. Nixon did win after losing - but just barely and it was two cycles later, plus '68 was a black swan election because of Wallace and Dems self destructing over VN.

Never saw this film - but Google Lens to the rescue.

He's a good study in how the objective rationality in which the human species takes so much pride is so often actually just the outcome an underlying 'decision' of the emotional/lizard brain. Even as a respected constitutional laywer, French could justify everything inside the GOP as long he he was experiencing the glow of group membership in his sect. But when he found himself outcast by the sect over Trump and the emotional fix was withdrawn, then suddenly everything became clear to him. I don't mean to pick on French because he's just one example of the what is the more common human condition. At least he did figure it out while he was still breathing and has apparently joined the good guys.

Department of useless information: The Lions have not been coached by anyone whose first or last name started with a vowel since WWII.

LOL - I hate them also, but it's not as easy as it sounds. Ann Arbor passed an ordinance about gas powered leaf blowers but has already had to make a bunch of backtracks. I have an EGO electric blower which is supposedly one of the better electric brands. I use it on the driveway and the walks but there is no way it could do my lawn (10 trees). The thing that is stupid is the commercial backpack style blowers are big enough you could put a decent muffler system on them, the manufacturers just don't. Related: Neighbor across the street has a hard lawn to mow. It's on a hill with several trees and a terrace to work around. He's a pretty green kind of guy and he bought an electric mower a few years ago. I'd watch him struggle get the lawn mowed, usually over two days. So over the last two summers he has now mulched over more than half the grass on his lot. I've never seen so much mulch.

the margin of play between the two teams was a less than showed on the scoreboard. Lions were better because they did what they had to at few critical points while GB didn't, but I'm not getting too far over my skis that this game says the Lions can't sill lose again.

Yup. He might be safe for the interim until whatever new rules/conferences/reimbursement systems come into place and they can shop for the guy to fit the new job description.

might be a shade dark for the classic 'Honolulu Blue" but the blue is darker on the all blues.....

So French says he talked Ike's granddaughter, who is curator of the Eisenhower archives. The story runs to the effect that leading into the '52 election, Ike was deeply concerned about the fact that isolationism was already growing again in the US with the shadow of WWII barely in the rear view mirror. Both parties were offering him the nomination. So he went to talk to Taft, who was the odds on favorite to be the GOP nominee if Ike passed on the offer, and he asked Taft what he thought About NATO. Taft said he opposed it. That answer persuaded Ike he had to run as a Republican because as a GOP president, he could force the GOP into an outward facing foreign policy consensus with the Dems, control McCarthy (whom he hated) from the inside, and leave the isolationists without leverage in either party. It's not the main point of French's essay but I found it the most interesting part, as we already know the rest of French's complaints about his ex-party all too well. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/opinion/trump-mcconnell-courage-leadership.html

IMO, this is something they can't put off and they can't let Boras jerk them around on. You try to make a deal now, this off-season, don't even think about waiting for next year. If Boras won't talk now or talks to kill time but won't deal, you move him while he is controlled for two seasons and you can still get good value back for him.. The worst thing you do is let magic thinking distort your understanding that as long as Boras is his agent, if he won't deal now the odds are overwhelming he's going to FA. It would be a terrible loss, but the CBA has already baked the cake, all you can do in minimize the long term damage.