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Turkey Bowl Trash Talk 2018

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Happy Thanksgiving to one and all, and we here give thanks for you joining with us and participating here. There are not many real remnants of the old blogosphere and commentary community left these days, and it still flourishes here, thanks to you. I was lazy this morning and am just now writing Turkey Trash, but Marcy has already posted the annual sister Food and Thanks Post, make sure to visit there too.

Okay, off we go. Thanksgiving has always been about football. Every year through college, law school and many years after, we had a Turkey Bowl. It was played among a bunch of us who played intramural flag football in college, and sometimes friends who actually played real college football. I even one time tried to recruit Pat Tillman, but he just laughed and said there was no way he was risking injury doing that. He was smart, I think there were more injuries to extremely hungover dudes in the Turkey Bowl than there would have been playing in full pads. Plus he would have hurt us. Game was always at 10:00 am at a local high school that would let us use their field. Stunned that none of us ever got a DWI driving to the game.

Okay, on to the games. First up is Chicago at Detroit. A week ago, this looked like another Kitteh mismatch for Thanksgiving. But Bears starting QB Mitch Trubisky is out and career backup Chase Daniel will be leading the charge. Daniel is a very decent backup, but has started just two games in his ten year NFL career. The Lions sure seem to have the edge here with Matt Stafford and, ahem, an improved running game lately (though Kerryon Johnson and Marvin Jones, responsible for that, are out). But Khalil Mack and the new Midway Monsters will be a problem. No clue, I rate it a toss up, even if Vegas likes Da Bears. The Bears defense may warrant that.

The second game is Redskins at Cowboys. Believe it or not, as horrible as the Cowboys have been to date this year, they will be atop the NFC East, tied with Washington, if they win this home game. On the other hand, the Skins will take a substantial lead if they win at Jerryworld. Speaking of starting QB’s out for Turkey day, Alex Smith is very out. Closest thing to Joe Theismann’s leg injury, eerily on the same exact date as Smith’s injury, but in 1985. Colt McCoy takes over for the Skins in a really important game. McCoy is not a bad choice if you have to have a backup suddenly starting. Should be interesting. Look for Washington to run Adrian Peterson hard against a Dallas defense that is not so good against the run. Look for Dallas to throw everything at Peterson. Should be interesting, and is yet another tossup.

Last game is tonight with the Falcons visiting the Saints in Nawlins. This one is NOT a tossup, the Saints have to be a heavy favorite. They are home in the loud and crazy Superdome, Drew Brees is having an MVP year and is simply on fire, and the Saints are putting up ridiculous numbers on offense. The Dirty Birds have been extremely disappointing so far. Sure Matt Ryan can still get hot and light em up, but do they have enough to keep pace with Brees, Michael Thomas, Alvin Kamara, Mark Ingram and the entirety of the Saints’ offense. Nope.

Since today has been a little sleepy already, gonna rock it up with a little Silke Berlinn and The Addictions doing a cover of the old Nancy Sinatra hit Jackson. By the way, that is our old friend John Amato, founder of the Crooks and Liars blog, honking magnificently on the tenor sax. Enjoy your food, enjoy your drink, and most of all enjoy the people around you today.

Obama and the Constitutionality of DADT and Other LGBT Discrimination

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After nearly two years of ignoring, scorning, demeaning and lecturing the progressive blogosphere that provided substantial and critical portions of the fuel propelling him into office, President Obama suddenly found time to sit down with five carefully chosen token representatives of the unwashed dirty hippy community five days before the coming mid-term election. An election increasingly looking quite catastrophic to his own Democratic party, and due in large part to his performance and policy selection in office. How thoughtful of Mr. Obama to finally have a dialect with his base now that he is desperate and less than a week out from the electoral tsunami.

Courtesy of Duncan Black (Atrios), one of the participants, here is a transcript of the festivities. You can draw your own conclusions as to how large of a dog and pony show this was, but I would like to focus on the portions of the meeting dealing with LGBT discrimination and the government’s relentless DADT policy.

Asked by Joe Sudbay of Americablog whether he actually had any real plan to accomplish passage of repeal legislation for DADT, Obama responded:

…And my hope is that will culminate in getting this thing overturned before the end of the year.

Now, as usual, I need 60 votes. So I think that, Joe, the folks that you need to be having a really good conversation with — and I had that conversation with them directly yesterday, but you may have more influence than I do — is making sure that all those Log Cabin Republicans who helped to finance this lawsuit and who feel about this issue so passionately are working the handful of Republicans that we need to get this thing done.

….

You’re financing a very successful, very effective legal strategy, and yet the only really thing you need to do is make sure that we get two to five Republican votes in the Senate.

And I said directly to the Log Cabin Republican who was here yesterday, I said, that can’t be that hard. Get me those votes.

Asked to describe his plan to pass critical legislation he has long promised one of his core constituencies, this is the pathetic drivel Barack Obama comes up with? The President of the United States and leader of the entire Democratic party pleads powerlessness to accomplish the goal, but demands the Log Cabin Republicans go forth and deliver him intransigent GOP Senators on a golden platter? Seriously, that is his plan? Perhaps Mr. Obama has mistaken the LCRs for the NRA or something, but if there is any entity with less sway over the entrenched and gilded GOP Senate leadership than Obama, it is the Log Cabin Republicans. Absurd and lame is too kind of a description for such tripe. I honestly don’t know what is worse, that this is Obama’s response or that he has the politically incompetence to state it on the record.

But there was more, oh yes there was more. Asked by Sudbay the straightforward yes or no question as to whether he considered DADT to be unconstitutional, the self proclaimed “Constitutional scholar” President came up with the following bucket of blarney:

And one of the things I’d like to ask you — and I think it’s a simple yes or no question too — is do you think that “don’t ask, don’t tell” is unconstitutional?

THE PRESIDENT: It’s not a simple yes or no question, because I’m not sitting on Read more →