Looks like an interesting draft prospect. But as a 192cm marking forward type, would he fill a need for us? He’s not the small crumbing forward we need although a Bayley Fritch type would be useful. We’d probably need to use our 1st round pick on him to get him.
In the UK, which is ramping up its assistance to Ukraine to now include long-range missiles, there are concerns about the implications of a Trump presidency. If Mr Trump cuts off the supply of weapons, the war will end on Russian terms, which is the West's worst nightmare, says the former head of Britain's secret service, Sir Alex Younger. "Putin didn't have a Plan B when he invaded Ukraine but this is now his Plan B - to wait it out."
Bashir al-Assad is an evil villain of the highest order who bombed Syrian civilians and used chemical weapons. But he wouldn’t have been able to win the civil war and remain if Putin hadn’t backed him. Surely, Putin was equally responsible for al-Assad’s war crimes. By the same token, if Trump cuts off aid to Ukraine and leaves Ukraine at the mercy of Russia’s war of annihilation, wouldn’t he share the sins of Putin? To give Putin victory in a war he started and is losing when Russian adventurism should be punished and deterred would make Trump a psychopath guilty of aiding and abetting mass murder. Siding with Putin’s dictatorship would be a historic low for the USA. Thank God FDR was the POTUS during WW2. If it had been Trump, we’d all be goosestepping in jackboots. I can just imagine Trump boasting of having letters from that really smart guy Adolf.
I can understand your antipathy towards the Ottoman Empire given that it treated Greeks as butt monkeys until the early 1800s. But your claim that the Renaissance was a reaction to Islamic proselytising is a bit bizarre. And let’s face it, the Roman Catholic Church was renowned for forcing Christianity down everyone’s throats and putting heretics to death. Don’t mention the Inquisition or you’ll get the comfy chair treatment.
I’d like to see all religions, Islam and Christianity included, kept out of politics. Anyone who wants to practice a religion should be free to do so but they shouldn’t be allowed to force non-believers to follow their edicts. Stay out of our lives and our bedrooms. In this respect, I agree with you that religion shouldn’t be forced on anyone.
Russia under Putin isn’t communist or even pretend-communist. It’s a Christian nationalist oligopoly or kleptocracy. That’s why right-wingers love Putin - he’s one of theirs.
But the Devil is the most powerful force in that scenario. Humble minions might help him but he dominates.
But what about the scenario where the Devil is helped by a much more powerful being. Wouldn’t that mean the Devil is really that being’s minion or partner-in-crime? And wouldn’t that affect the moral calculus?
Isn’t that what we all thought in 2016 Lods? No way they’ll vote in a racist, sexist liar like Trump? And then at each stage, the delusion continued. Now he’s the Republican Candidate, he’ll steer to the centre. Now he’s the President, he’ll be more presidential. Now he’s lost the election, he’ll admit defeat for the good of the country. I’m not going with wishful thinking. And there’s no doubt he’ll push harder against Democratic guardrails if he gets in this time. He’ll select far right minions to do his dirty work right off the bat and bring the DOJ and FBI to heel. Then he’ll unleash anti-democratic strategies the far right think tanks have been cooking up. Don’t expect the Supreme Court to stand in the way. Clarence Thomas’s wife is a far right activist and he’s bought and paid for by Harlan Crow. And there’s another 4 arch-conservative justices who rarely stood in Trump’s way when he was last in power.
The thing you’ve neatly sidestepped is what happens to Putin if Trump wins the election. There’s little doubt Putin will win big if Trump wins. If the war in Ukraine is still going on, Ukraine will be forked. MAGA is pro-Putin and there are already outspoken GOP critics of the US backing Ukraine. There won’t be anything to stop him handing the Ukraine over to Putin. And there won’t be anything to stop Trump helping Putin back onto the world stage. In fact, just the prospect of Trump winning election will encourage Putin to keep the war going so he can win after the US backs away. Isn’t emboldening Putin evil?
Thry, that’s the thing I love about the far right. They’re all for people having freedom of speech and freedom to live their lives as they wish. Well, as long as they approve of that speech or way of life. Just don’t say gay or write books they don’t like. Or be gay or trans. Or a feminist. Or Muslim. Or be non-white (unless you have honorary white status). Or be left-wing. Can’t you just smell the freedom?
The depths to which Trump would sink are only limited by external constraints. If he were able to eliminate all constraints, I shudder to think how far he’d go. After all, he’s a malignant narcissist and sociopath. He suggested to his Defence Secretary that they should launch missiles into Mexico to target drug cartels but fortunately Esper was able to talk him out of that. By the way, Mexico is not an enemy of the USA but would have become one if Trump had had his way and who knows where that would have led. This is also the stable genius who suggested that hurricanes should be targeted with nuclear bombs to blow them up. And his use of Federal agents to target BLM protesters and others shouldn’t be forgotten. Nor should his unleashing of a mob to storm the Capitol building and potentially assassinate his Vice President. Anyone who stands in his way is fair game and any amount of death or destruction he is able to inflict would not weigh on his conscience in the slightest as he has none.
The consequences of an unfettered Trump taking control of the USA are far worse than the dangers of Putin’s autocracy (unless, of course, Putin starts a nuclear war which remains unlikely) as Putin is currently boxed in. Trump’s 45th presidency pushed the far right towards power in South America and Europe and that would accelerate if he were to seize control of the USA. How would he deal with China? Would he team up with China (as Hitler did with Russia) before starting a war with China (as Hitler did with Russia)? Perhaps he’d be able to do none of this as he’s old and may not live long enough to achieve it. And maybe some of the guardrails of democracy would hold him up. But where would Trump end up if things fall well for him?
In the short term, it’s likely he’d hand Ukraine to Putin on a platter. You’re right that Putin is a war criminal and evil incarnate, but wouldn’t it be just as evil to reward his murderous attacks on civilians with victory and allow Putin to re-emerge as a global leader rather than the pariah he currently is? Putin is currently held in check by NATO, but Trump can hobble it by withdrawing from it. And seeing Putin palling around with Trump as Trump did with Kim Jong Un would cut off Putin’s enemies inside and outside Russia at the knees.
He’s already rehabilitated one murderous regime. After the murder and dismemberment of the journalist Kashoggi in the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Turkey on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia looked as if it would be a pariah state but Trump did everything he could to rehabilitate the murderer. And it worked. They even have a golf tour now. And a big surprise was that Saudi Arabia gave Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner billions to invest for them.
Yes, Putin is scum and the world would be better if someone takes him out. But the same can be said of Bashir al-Assad and the many dictators around the world who happily murder portions of their population or wage wars (including President Xi who seems intent on wiping out the Uyghurs and other groups). How evil they are isn’t necessarily determined by the body count as that’s often proportional to opportunity and circumstance.
But unless we can and do take someone in the mid season draft, we do have to make do with what we’ve got until this season is over. And we should only bring in another small forward by trade or in the draft if he’s clearly better than what we’ve got. We don’t want to recycle delisted players in the hope we can find a diamond in the rough (spoiler alert: our development of players is hardly elite). If there’s a good small forward who’ll be out of contract at the end of the year, maybe we could do what we did with Acres as we can certainly promise that there will be a spot in the seniors. The only problem with that is that maybe TdK ends up as a delisted free agent but we lose the considerable compensation we’d receive (as happened when Eddie left and we picked up Daisy).
The debate over the small forwards is a bit odd. No one is claiming Owies will win a Brownlow or get into the AA team. And sure, our small forwards as a group aren’t currently the envy of other sides. But you work with what you’ve got. The last offseason saw us prioritising wingers even though I thought we needed to find a crumbing goalsneak and a quick midfielder to add pace to the midfield. But you can’t fill all the holes in one offseason.
It used to be that the best crumbing smalls were found in the bargain basement. Eddie Betts, Stephen Milne and Tom Papley all came through the rookie draft (and remember we almost nabbed Papley in the manoeuvrings surrounding Joe Daniher). These days, the best goalsneaks are drafted early: Rankine (pick 3), Rachele (pick 5) and Pickett (pick 12). The best small forward in the coming draft, Nick Watson, is predicted to be a top 5 pick (despite being only 168-170cm and a bit of a flog). So you can’t just go down to the corner milk bar and buy a genuine goal kicking small anymore (to use a Paganism).
So we have to make do with what we have for the foreseeable future. Playing Motlop, Durdin and Owies together enables them to complement each others’ strengths. Durdin is the fast guy who’s best at snaps. Motlop is the best footballer although not blessed with great pace. And Owies seems to be the hardest running of the lot which enables him to run deep into F50 after running up the ground. He’s also a good mark and set shot, though I don’t see him as a great snap at goals.
Trump wants to be Putin. He wants to destroy democratic institutions so he can be as autocratic as Putin. But if he manages it, he’ll be far more powerful than Putin given Russia’s weakened state.
Interesting. Juror 77 who joined in the unanimous jury verdict (under NY law, verdicts must be unanimous), was a bit of a MAGA fan. He survived an application to dismiss him for inferred bias as he had listened on a few occasions over the preceding 6 months to a podcast by Tim Pool, a far-right, pro-Trump commentator aligned with Steve Bannon. Strangely enough, Trump’s lawyer was forced to argue that a political affiliation didn’t mean bias, although Trump has smeared anyone who might vote for Democrats as clearly biased against him. The trial judge denied the application.
I had assumed E Jean Carroll had been lucky to score a jury full of Democrats, which wasn’t far fetched because NY is a very Blue State. But there was a Trump-friendly juror who could have vetoed any verdict against Trump. Maybe he did a deal to go along with the verdict if the rape allegation wasn’t proven. Trump is already trying to paint it as a verdict by a jury of biased Democrats under the direction of a biased Democratic judge who manipulated the trial to ensure a verdict against him. Yet the jury had a far-right-leaning juror and the judge allowed him to stay on the jury.
In a haunting reminder of how Trump has attacked democratic institutions using stochastic terrorism (making calls for action against his enemies in the hope that some will use violence against them), the trial judge advised the jury to remain anonymous as they had during the trial by his order. He suggested that the 15 minutes of fame they might receive by appearing in the media was not worth the consequences that might flow. And he told the jurors that any juror who took that risk should not identify any other juror and put them in harms way. My God, this a former POTUS and the judge, rightly, gave the jury advice he would have given in the case of the criminal trial of a Mafia Don.
It would be funny to hear his GOP opponents in Primary debates call him the Predator. More chance though that Biden would respond to Trump’s predictable attempts to recycle the Crooked Hilary thing during debates. Can you imagine how Trump would lose it!
The word Predator would also have resonance in MAGA world. Back in the 90s, the GOP was happily bandying around the idea that blacks were Superpredators with superhuman strength who had to be tamed with harsh laws (and unfortunately Biden didn’t stand in their way in order to help Clinton politically). MAGA wingnuts are now trying to brand teachers and librarians who refuse to join in the Pogrom against transsexuals as predators (as well as the more mundane claims they’re groomers and paedophiles).
It’s amazing that a party that has so many perverts in it sees sex offenders everywhere but are happy to ignore their own perversions. Jim Jordan (now the chair of the House Judiciary Committee) was an assistant wrestling coach at a university while the team doctor was busy groping team members. Even though 6 wrestlers say they complained to Jordan, he has stuck with the Sgt Shultz defence. Gaetz was lucky to avoid charges of transporting a 17 year old across State lines for the purposes of prostitution (but his close political friend was jailed over it).
Milo Yiannopoulos was a top far right commentator on social media. He fed his followers red meat and they loved it, despite the fact he’s gay. Perhaps being gay was a plus as they like to have members of a minority who are prepared to attack their own: think Diamond & Silk and Ye. But Milo was always a crapstirrer rather than being happy to carve out a niche as “they’re gay”. And his popularity plummeted when he argued that it could well be a good thing for a male teacher to have a loving sexual relationship with his 14 year old student. I can’t get out of my head the Monty Python song “I’m a Lumberjack” where the chorus is fully with Michael Palin until he goes fully into cross dressing and then they finally erupt!
Oddly enough, though, Milo is still an influential far right commentator which seems odd when he has espoused actual paedophilia. It seems real paedophilia is less of a problem than fake paedophilia that’s used as a political weapon.
