SP and I are in a state of bliss- football is back! Even if we’re just stuck with seeing dogs like Philly-Cleveland or Detroit-Tampa Bay. When the regular season starts, we’ll have the full NFL package and our Sundays will be totally wasted in a most delightful manner.

The main disadvantage: we basically don’t watch actual television. We see old movies and binge-watch selected shows on Amazon and Netflix, but the idea of seeing something on NBC-CBS-CNN-whatever is repulsive to us.  And seeing games on networks reminds us of why. The commercials promoting network shows really brought home to us the mathematical reality that half the population has a sub-100 IQ. And none more so than the endless promos last night for a show called God Friended Me. We just stared at each other in disbelief. There is not enough alcohol in this world that could make something like that tolerable. Maybe with enough head trauma… This explains who wins elections.

In any case, this will be a quieter season. SP yells at referees, especially when she’s been drinking (and how can you watch NFL games and not be drinking?). Her usual targets have been Ed Hochuli and Jeff Triplette, both of whom could get her into a rage-storm and both of whom are now retired. And that just leaves Jerome Boger, and nobody could yell at him. Damn, he ought to be the ref for every game and be the only one allowed to use the microphone to announce the penalties.

Ahem, this is supposed to be a links post, I just get distracted. Today in history, John Birch was killed by the commies, which gave rise to the eponymous Red-Scare organization. It’s delightful irony that this banner now is in the hands of Team Blue. It is also the birthday of Michael Rennie (the One True Klaatu), Sean Connery (the One and Only True James Bond), noted Jew musician Gene Simmons, and antisemitic piece of shit musician Elvis Costello (who also has the distinction of calling James Brown and Ray Charles “niggers”). Oh, and the Grand Mustache, Rollie Fingers, who I don’t think is an antisemite and never called Reggie Jackson a nigger.

On to actual links.

Not news, but an interesting link, 10 Libertarian Thoughts on the Civil War. The author makes the vital point that, without an explicit constitutional provision outlining the means of states exiting the union, a civil war was almost inevitable. But then we get into the knotty issues of, “What are the moral obligations of a society toward other societies where there is injustice?” “What are the economic drivers which might cause a subset of states to want to exit and form a different union?” “What is the moral balance between the liberty to exit a voluntary association and the motivation of continuing oppression of people within the exiting states?”

I hope you read this article and that it stimulates some discussion here. It’s a very nicely done piece.

We in Illinois have an interesting gubernatorial choice this year between a totally ineffective billionaire who will oversee massive tax increases and a totally corrupt billionaire who will oversee massive tax increases. Surely the Libertarian Party has a better alternative, right? Meet Team L’s candidate, “Kash” Jackson.

Jackson, who was previously named Benjamin Winderweedle before a legal name change in 2017… has said he is unemployed and living exclusively on disability and pension payments from serving in the Navy 20 years. He’s said in court he takes home about $4,500 a month from those benefits.

Great.

At that, I guess we’re still better off than Florida.

U.S. House candidate Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera has a long list of accomplishments to bolster her campaign in Florida. But she is perhaps best known for claiming that she was abducted by space aliens as a child… [L]ast weekend, the Miami Herald endorsed her for the GOP nomination in the Tuesday primary out of a field of nine candidates.

Rodriguez Aguilera says she was taken aboard a spaceship as a young girl by blond extraterrestrials who resembled the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. She says they told her that the “center of the world’s energy is Africa” and that thousands of non-human skulls were once discovered in a cave on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

“We realize that Rodriguez Aguilera is an unusual candidate,” the editorial noted, adding that the paper was impressed with her “boots-on-the-ground ideas and experience.”

We need more politicians like Bettina.

Apparently, the Zionazis control FIFA!

President of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) Jibril Rajoub was fined CHF 20,000 ($20,333) and banned from matches for a year by FIFA’s Disciplinary Committee on Friday… In June, Rajoub called on Palestinian fans to burn pictures of Messi as well as replicas of his shirt should the world-famous striker choose to visit Israel. “We are going to target him personally and we call on all to burn his picture and his shirt and to abandon him,” Rajoub said at the time.

I don’t know why anyone cares. It’s soccer, not actual sports.

Speaking of football and Florida, they sure do know how to liven up a game down there.

A shooting at a high school football game in Jacksonville, Fla., on Friday night left one person dead and two injured, officials said. The shooting happened about 10 p.m. ET, 15 minutes after the game ended at Raines High School, where about 4,000 spectators attended, the Florida Times Union reported, citing Jacksonville authorities.
The stadium for the Raines-versus-Lee High School game was placed on lockdown as security personnel worked to keep the remaining fans and players safe, Jacksonville’s WJXT-TV reported.

Now maybe it’s just me, but it seems that trapping people inside is not exactly something that’s going to make them safer.

The superintendent said everyone coming into the game had to undergo a magnetic detector wand search and that security inside the game area was tight.

Well, that was certainly effective. And cue the predictable:

“This is evidence that there is a community issue that has to be addressed, and one of those issues includes access to guns,” Paula Wright, a school board member, told the paper.

Fuck you, Paula.

As a kid, I hated two things in the public school morning ritual: reciting the Lord’s Prayer (this was before Madalyn Murray’s court win) and the Pledge of Allegiance. So initially, this started out well.

An Atlanta charter school will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance as part of its morning meeting agenda. Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School on Grant Street announced the change Tuesday in a statement from elementary campus principal Lara Zelski.

Yay, Lara! Oh, wait, maybe not.

“Teachers and the K-5 leadership team will be working with students to create a school pledge that we can say together at morning meeting,” Zelski said. That pledge, “…will focus on students’ civic responsibility to their school family, community, country and our global society.”

Fuck you, Lara.

Old Guy Music! And keeping with Brett’s theme and my semi-traumatic visit to Detroit this past week, the one hit wonder pride of Motor City, the Amboy Dukes! As usual, The Nuge plays it close to the chest.