johnzo

yeah, my mom was in municipal politics for years and knows elections very well. She's astonished at the stuff that happens in the USA. The First Amendment is a hell of a drug. It is very hard for American governments, at any level, to restrain speech.

I will celebrate when Trump is no longer president and I will celebrate when the ****** is in the ground. But I agree with Colin: so far, the guy has started way fewer wars than the typical GOP president in my lifetime. It's hard for me to pick between Bush II and Trump. Bush II killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and left things way more ****** up than they were, and he figured that the USA could tame Afghanistan when every empire in history that has tried became not-an-empire shortly afterwards. Who to choose between a semiserious cabal of couchstain war pigs who tried to bomb the Middle East into Pax Americana and the lunatic thief who is prying all the copper pipes out of the White House while the country gets more divided and coronavirus runs rampant?

the thing you need to realize is that "Cruz" is not really a white guy name. There lots of racism in America directed at people with the name "Cruz." You may have heard about the ICE raids and the border wall... Yes, I know that Ted Cruz is a mongrel of Irish, Italian, Cuban, and Carribean descent, and he was born in Canada. "Mexican name and not born in the USA" is something that resonates with the Trump base regardless of the details, and I very much doubt that Trump would've worked the birther angle against a candidate named Ted Crews.

Just made our xmas plans. My spouse and I are going to hard quarantine for two weeks, then spend two weeks in Portland with our very best chosen family. I am so so so stoked for this.

(weird they gave the Afghani restauranteurs transylvanian accents, but hey, it was the nineties)

like a lot of things in the USA, it varies from state to state. This guy was elected. Based on what I read here (https://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/2018/02/governors_order_recall_are_the.html) he can be recalled, or he can be stripped of his powers by the governor.

Holy ****, not a super huge Van Halen fan but you can't deny the impact that EVH had on guitarists. rest in power chords, Eddie.

this is pretty funny I think. he gets all het up about St. John / St John's. Wait until someone tells him about Roughriders / Rough Riders.

If I ever shame myself here to such a degree that I have to abandon my name and start anew, my new secret identity will be Gotcha Books.

Ok, I'm reading the "Where'd the money go, Donny?" NYT story... huh! 4 million bucks, that's unseemly but not too bad I guess, I had thought that the number would be one or two orders of magnitude higher, maybe there's less to this than I thought? reading onward.. uh, yeah, okay. There it is, right in plain sight there.

A few years ago the TSN showed footage of how the crew entered the TF press box before a game. There was a ladder up through the front window, if I recall right.

60 people in a one-bedroom apartment. Brings back fond memories, but yeah, now is not the time for that kinda thing.

How much did the CFL want from the feds? Was it $150M? We could fund the league if we bust 300 more bozos like this. Kentucky Man Accused Of Breaking Canada's COVID-19 Rules Faces $569,000 Fine https://www.npr.org/2020/08/25/905847150/american-man-accused-of-breaking-canadas-covid-19-rules-faces-560-000-fine?fbclid=IwAR3Sb0OP1A_zql7d-Ld8d5RjICKl8dAM_ldZvrr-BK-ntl6TuvX3FrBKwk0

Gavin Walls! I remember that guy found an extra gear in the big game, he was makings plays all over the field (as a DE!) he was playing like he wanted to win the game singlehandedly, but not in the way where someone does too much and plays badly, the opposite way where they are just out of their minds good and making plays that you wouldn't expect.

I would kick into this for a memorial or as a tribute to a great CFL fan but wouldn't buy it for myself.

damn, I haven't thought about this in forever but at some point in 83-84 I wrote a letter to the "Thrill of A Lifetime" TV show (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrill_of_a_Lifetime) telling them I wanted to play QB for the Blue Bombers.

First bomber memory: my dad attends the 1982 Western Final. Bombers had Moon and company on the ropes, but Kennerd blew the game. Remember vividly my dad being angry about that when he comes home the following week, giving a variation of the modern "you had one job" speech. Second bomber memory: September 24th 1983. My first live game. A huge week in Bomber history, Dieter Brock has just been traded. Starter Nickie Hall gets hurt, Clements comes on in relief with like two days of practice and he looks pretty rough, but Willard Reaves ran wild and we pave the Riders 50-19. I remember wanting the Roughriders to score because I want to see the Flame more. (lol, just like @TrueBlue4ever) I had not figured things out yet, I was only eleven. The roar of the crowd was amazing. I'd never seen 25,000 people in one place before; I grew up in the deep deep sticks and Winnipeg was the big city to me. Came away a Bomber fan for life. Third bomber memory: October 1984. Bombers are cruising. I see them beat the Eskimos 30-11 and then somehow I get to go to practice the next week without paying or anything! I sat in the stands and watched the practice near a couple of teenage girls who were really really into Trevor Kennerd (?). I watch them practice a fake field goal with Cameron passing the ball. (They ran that play in BC the next week, it was a shitshow) After practice I get autographs from Clements (who seems grumpy and irritated, but my dad explained that he was working and probably had other things on his mind) and Reaves, who is cheerful and who tells me he's gonna get his 1800 in BC next week. Those autographs were in a cheap little steno notebook, I've laminated them and they are on my wall now and they were in my jacket pocket at the 2011 Grey Cup. Didn't help though. Later, David Shaw notices me hanging around and gets me to hold the locker room emergency exit door open for him so he can run to his car or something.

Been watching the canceled SyFy show "Vagrant Queen." it's a goofy lighthearted super derivative space opera made out of bits of Star Wars and Farscape and Buck Rogers ... but the Buck Rogers character is from Winnipeg, his ship is the called the Winnipeg or "peggy", the ship's robot is "Winnie B" and there's at least a couple of times when he goes on about the Bombers rule and the Roughriders suck. It's an okay show, nothing super special and probably too lighthearted for the people here. Can see why it was cancelled but the Winnipeg stuff was fun.

yeah, this is authoritarianism at its finest -- McConnell jams up the existing system and Trump rides to the rescue.

Springsteen has the same problem with Born in the USA. You listen to the chorus, it's a big rah-rah USA USA USA! anthem, but you listen to the verse ... it's not that.

Jamie Macoun is long retired but his spirit lives on in the Flames.

you can be absolutely certain that every last dollar that they appropriated for that border wall wound up in the construction. no grift there.

talking to my hockey friends in town, the Kraken are definitely going to be everyone's second favorite team .... most of the population of Seattle wasn't born here so the hockey fans already have deep loyalties to another team like I do. I like the logo. Was worried it would be some nineties cartoon nonsense with an angry octopus holding a hockey stick. especially like the colors. color schemes with multiple blues have always looked sharp to me, probably Argos brain damage, and we have four different blues! and that real minimal touch of red is sharp. looking forward to the Jets vs. Kraken western conference championship series!

holy crap the FBI arrested a state house speaker? damn!

ah yeah, I knew I wrote something specific about this before, this is from back in 2018: