That Aud Smell

I can't say I've ever found polished and unbelievable BS to elucidate a gotdam thing. That goes doubly when it's coming from a billionaire.

I'll happily settle for the gratitude of just my daughters, which, I'm happy to say, I've earned to this point in time. But I'm a work in progress.

The markets and Capital won't countenance significant cuts to things that make their engines roar. They will come for entitlements, eventually. It may take a full-blown crisis and meltdown, the likes of which we have never seen as a nation or a modern western culture, to make it happen. But entitlements will primarily be what gets cut.

As for church shootings (in America, anyway), those attacks are not motivated by animus for the Christian faith in the same way that attacks on synagogues are plainly motivated by anti-Semitism. There's a decent write-up on the subject here, although I recall reading a more in-depth analysis of the issue elsewhere. https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/06/us/church-shootings-truth/index.html There's a virulent and despicable subculture in America and elsewhere in the west that vilifies Jewish people in a way that I find stomach-turning and breath-taking. There's no corresponding subculture -- in America, anyway -- that seeks a similar eradication of Christian peoples. It's a dangerous proposition to equate the attack in Pittsburgh with a larger trend of anti-religiosity, as Kelly Conway has sought to do. In modern western culture, Christians have never been slaughtered by the millions because of their religious and ethnic identity. Jewish people have, though.

That's a horse of a different colour, IMO. Many, if not most, goalies are thought to be a bit kooky. But not legitimately mentally ill. I've heard variations of this sort of thing in the past. But I'm done with jokes that are predicated on the idea that women are weak, etc. And I'm gonna keep calling people out on it until I stop seeing it. Here, and elsewhere. That includes giving my buddy the side-eye stank and quiet request to cease and desist when, 3 beers in, he let loose with his familiar "hit 'em with your purse, Housley!" at a game earlier this year. I'm glad to have missed this juncture of the game.

Given the strength of opponent and piss poor quality of their own offence, I'd say that D played remarkably. I also think their (the D's) resolve will start to falter in the coming weeks.

Let's Go, Buffalo!

I have no use for Witten, obviously. Booger’s meh. But Tessitore is legit. The guy’s paid his dues calling everything and anything for a decade, too (e.g., X Games stuff, dogs catching frisbees). And he’s got a big game voice, IMO. It’s (mostly) over between us. She’s proven herself to be a dolt with bad taste. No one knowingly ripped on anyone while they were struggling with mental health issues. No one. You may recall that the acne jokes met with a fair amount of disapproval, too. Of course, people who suffer from acne haven’t, because of said acne, struggled through the course of human history to be treated as co-equal human beings. The person who pushed the marfans joke was banned. If people mocked Connolly for being brittle, then they were ignoring one of the smartest posters we ever had around here — @X. Benedict — who would carefully explain how brave and even reckless that guy was with his body. In sum: Stop making women the butt of jokes and take the L on this one.

Same, and it's not really close. Love Thurm. Stevie's pretty great in his own right.

He means spending cuts. Entitlements, primarily. Perhaps I am not detecting your sarcasm.

Dahlin skating with Risto as a result. Please get better soon, Jake.

I mean this with respect: I can't think of anything I'd be less interested in hearing than that fracking oil man try to explain or contextualize those comments.

What's funny is that the Browns did that Office parody for their preseason video.

I have a friend from childhood who lives in central NYS. He's an accountant. From everything I can tell (and I have various channels (shared friends, etc.)), he is a good dad, a devoted husband, an active member of his local church, a little league coach, yadda yadda yadda. He's also a "prepper." These are people who are planning to survive a major disruption to our modern way of living. This is often portrayed as wing nuts who are concerned with a zombie apocalypse, or whatever. While my friend enjoys the zombie trope, that's not why he preps. And he also doesn't prep because of a fear that a solar storm will devastate the electrical grid, or an asteroid will bring on a new ice age. No. He thinks that the debts of first world nations will eventually cause the entire global economic system to collapse in on and itself. Like a building being demo'd. This guy is super normal. Every now and then, I wake up in a panic, out of a dream in which the major disruption was underway, and I was unprepared. The most I do is to keep everyone's bicycles in good running condition. We could probably make it to my friend's home in 4-6 days.

I've seen it reported that the level of the debt's growth (as a percentage of the existing debt) has slowed under Trump's administration. They are still tacking on a cool trillion+ per year, by most estimates, though. The debt continues to swell at totally unsustainable levels.

The things he says, and the ways in which he chooses to say them ... they are all such obvious dog whistles to those who harbour those radicalized ideologies. He's emboldening them, even while they would likely say that Trump doesn't do enough to deal with what they view as a problem.

Jason Stanley summarizes his “formula for fascism”—a “surprisingly simple” pattern now repeating in Europe, South America, India, Myanmar, Turkey, the Philippines, and “right here in the United States.” No matter where they appear, “fascist politicians are cut from the same cloth,” he says. The elements of his formula are: 1. Conjuring a “mythic past” that has supposedly been destroyed (“by liberals, feminists, and immigrants”). Mussolini had Rome, Turkey’s Erdoğan has the Ottoman Empire, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban rewrote the country’s constitution with the aim of “making Hungary great again.” These myths rely on an “overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a past that is racially pure, traditional, and patriarchal.” Fascist leaders “position themselves as father figures and strongmen” who alone can restore lost greatness. And yes, the fascist leader is “always a ‘he.’” 2. Fascist leaders sow division; they succeed by “turning groups against each other,” inflaming historical antagonisms and ancient hatreds for their own advantage. Social divisions in themselves—between classes, religions, ethnic groups and so on—are what we might call pre-existing conditions. Fascists may not invent the hate, but they cynically instrumentalize it: demonizing outgroups, normalizing and naturalizing bigotry, stoking violence to justify repressive “law and order” policies, the curtailing of civil rights and due process, and the mass imprisonment and killing of manufactured enemies. 3. Fascists “attack the truth” with propaganda, in particular “a kind of anti-intellectualism” that “creates a petri dish for conspiracy theories.” (Stanley’s fourth book, published by Princeton University Press, is titled How Propaganda Works.) We would have to be extraordinarily naïve to think that only fascist politicians lie, but we should focus here on the question of degree. For fascists, truth doesn’t matter at all. (As Rudy Giuliani says, "truth isn't truth.") Hannah Arendt wrote that fascism relies on “a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth.” She described the phenomenon as destroying “the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world.... [T]he category of truth verses falsehood [being] among the mental means to this end.” In such an atmosphere, anything is possible, no matter how previously unthinkable.

Geez. Good on you, Cody Hodgson. I am curious now: There must be a spectrum of symptoms associated with the disorder? Because he's evidently still quite functional in terms of his gross and fine motor skills. Ah, man - the letter thing was just fans clowning around with a proverbial whipping boy player. There's nothing really wrong with that. Also: Didn't someone once riff off that by saying that a player who was then wearing an "A" also needed to have the A's removed from his name? I loved that post.

excuse me? you might wanna brush up on the TOS around here, sir.

I guess I can't really argue with that. Sort of like a bad cough that comes from a viral infection, but then develops into a bacterial infection.

Certainly not me. As for the matter of armed security: It did surprise me to read a bit -- in the wake of this atrocity -- about how much Jewish congregations around America have done in terms of securing their places of worship. There are apparently Jewish congregations that regularly arrange for armed security -- but usually only around the high holidays. I will admit to being unable to understand anti-Semitism. As in: I literally do not understand it. I don't have a proper grounding in what forms the basis for the hate. More than anything, it just seems like so much anger, hate, and violence ends up being brought against the Jewish people because, for those who harbour such feelings and urges generally, the Jewish people are what they find after they take a "path of least resistance" approach to ventilating their hate. And I'm done with being disappointed or offended by what Trump does, and does not, say in these kinds of situations. He is who and what he is. And he is a symptom, not a cause, of the problems the country has right now.

This is a bit of a "long view," but very worthwhile if you have the time. This is NFL player Eric Reid explaining why he's got a problem with fellow NFL player Malcolm Jenkins. Note well how Terry Pegula's name comes up -- a couple of times -- as having told the NFL players in a widely reported meeting that the league needed a "black figurehead" to step forward and help rehabilitate the league (read: white owners (Kim Pegula notwithstanding (that's my snarky take, by the way - there's no mention of Kim Pegula in the clip))) in the eyes of its sponsors and other stakeholders relative to the players' pregame protests. Launch Terry Pegula into the freakin' sun for all I care at this point.

Was at my optometrist’s office today. They’ve got a framed Hank Tallinder jersey on a wall. It bears the #20. I recall him wearing 10. What gap in memory am I having that I can’t recall him in 20? Did he wear it when he came back to Buffalo from NJ?

Let’s go, Buffalo!!

5 v 5 last night, this line had a raw Corsi up toward 70%. So, the eye test matches a moderately useful advanced stat -- they had a terrific game.