The puppies have spoken on tonight’s college football championship game:
I thought Fallon put his thumb on the scale for the Buckeyes a bit by standing on that side of the ramp, but a quorum of puppies eventually migrated to the Ducks bowl. Still, it wasn’t a resounding endorsement of the Mighty Ducks, was it? That might portend a close game.
We’ll likely have a thread on the game up tonight, so please feel free to discuss non-sporting topics herein — or post your predictions if you feel like it. I’m hoping the Ducks win for one reason: I don’t personally know ANY Ducks fans in the wild, but I know many Buckeyes, and to a man / woman, they’re obnoxiously anti-Gator. Plus, I have a soft spot for the Ducks for so thoroughly dismantling Florida State. So GO DUCKS!
Anyhoo, feel free to discuss whatever.
Mike J
But have you seen the Dog Goldberg machine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA56LgpFbSw
trollhattan
Loving that tonight’s game is a modern recasting of the old school Rose Bowl, so here’s to the Ducks crushing Woody Hayes.
In Western water politics, rare good news from our activist Supreme Court, in that even they can see this was a big old bag of whine with no cheese.
Ranch & Syrup, please report to the Bat Signal.
geg6
Not much of a college football fan and I certainly won’t be watching this snooze fest, but…
GO DUCKS!
For the exact same reason as you, Betty.
jl
Awwww… that was so cute. Now put the puppies in little puppy football uniforms and let them play the bowl game.
PhoenixRising
Mrs Phoenix was born at the Oregon student health center…my MIL didn’t make it from her 9am class all the way to the hospital.
Our lovely daughter’s first phrase was, of course, ‘Go Ducks!’
I’m from Ohio.
We’re not watching the game, as she has her first colonoscopy in the AM and can’t eat anything, plus she’s not up to sparring.
Elizabelle
Paul Ryan has taken himself out of the Klown Kalvacade for 2016. Says he can do more as House Ways and Means chairman. Sadly, he’s correct.
And: I love the Wonkette headlines box. Not sure why they get through Adblock, but they’re about a hundred times more informative than the old Newsmax crap.
Villago Delenda Est
As a graduate of the University of Oregon before it was transformed into Phil Knight’s Kollege for Jock Kids, I will of course be rooting for the Fighting Fashion Nightmares, who, in a fit of fashion faux pas that defies the imagination, will not be dressed in the traditional some shade of green and some shade of yellow, but, inexplicably, like the Oakland Raiders. Also in part rooting for the Ducks because they’re playing THE Ohio State University, and such arrogance must be punished.
Also, too, it will drive the asshats at ESPN bonkers. Not to mention the Disney folks who get the vapors every time they see something even close to Donald Duck representing the UofO, even if Walt himself DID give permission for the UofO to do so.
jl
GOP starts gunning for social security right out of the gate. So, Obama will be more in the mood for a grand bargain now? Is that what they are betting on.
This idea did not work out very well for them when Bush II was behind it, back in the day before he flushed his reputation down the toilet and he still had a lot of ‘political capital’ with the public, as the saying goes. Even now, on social insurance issues, the GOP would love to have half the reputation with the public than Bush II had at its lowest ebb. I hate to see the Congressional GOP try this BS again because the stakes are so high. Butt, if they are going to try this again, what makes them think it will work out better than the last time. Nothing I can see, unless as I said above, they think Obama is still interest in some BS grand bargain. The Obama I have seen and heard lately is not consistent with that idea, though I don’t know.
House Budget Chair Signals Big Social Security Reforms A-Coming
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tom-price-social-security-reforms
burnspbesq
Guess I’ll be watching Coastal Carolina vs. Campbell.
Pogonip
How is your dog’s tail? Is she still on restricted wagging?
burnspbesq
@Elizabelle:
Hard to imagine feeling nostalgic for the days when Dave Camp was W&M chair, but after a few months of Ryan …
Betty Cracker
@jl: I hope to sweet bleeding Jeebus that Obama will not be receptive to reviving the “Grand Bargain,” which was mostly grand for tax-dodging billionaires and corporations. His most staunch supporters insisted at the time that the “Grand Bargain” talk was just a feint that allowed PBO to cast himself as a reasonable man and his enemies as gibbering loons, which was plenty clear without pretending to meet them halfway, I thought. Still, I hope to Christ they were right.
@Pogonip: She’s still not as waggy as she once was. I begin to think she never will be. But it’s definitely much better.
jharp
I am one of the Ohio State fans you speak of.
And I would include that I am rabidly anti any SEC team. And Florida State.
That said, though I will be rooting for Ohio Oregon would not be a bad team to lose to.
Violet
@trollhattan: From your quote:
How anyone can say that with a straight face given all the subsidies they receive. My irony meter can’t go past 11.
burnspbesq
Am I being unfair in my assumption that pretty much everyone who is decrying Obama’s absence from yesterday’s march in Paris would have found a reason to decry his presence if he had shown up?
Violet
@burnspbesq: That’s not unfair. That’s an accurate assessment of circumstances.
Related: World Leader gathering was photo-op on secured street. Weren’t actually at demonstration.
Corvus
I am a Buckeye and I hate the Gators. I had a once in a lifetime chance to go to national championship game. Against the Gators (w Urban as their coach). It was awful. And then the basketball team made it to the NCAA final, against the Gators. Gah.
Yeah, its great to get the the championship game in football and basketball in the same season. But it leaves a mark when you lose twice to the same damn team. Plus, Tebow.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
The “Obama can do no right” bunch are so predictable, aren’t they?
lethargytartare
aren’t all right-thinking Americans ™ rabidly anti-florida?
even if that weren’t the case, I’m a buckeye fan by marriage, taking some sheepish delight in the NCAA’s stupid drug policy.
also, the OSU band rules.
Cacti
This is Oregon’s moment. The day that all of Phil Knight’s sweatshop millions have paid for. They’re even the favorite this time around.
If they can’t close the deal now, they probably never will.
jl
@Violet: From what I have read, CA agriculture gets about 45 percent of all water that flows through the state, and about 80 percent of the water controllable by state and federal water projects. So, they have not been overlooked. If CA is going into medium to long term drought conditions, CA agriculture will have to adjust and some of it will have to go away. Glad the SCOTUS is not corrupt on all issues.
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
Almost as predictable as the English football pundits who seem to have forgotten that Luis Suarez now plays for Barcelona and Daniel Sturridge has been out injured for almost four months.
Betty Cracker
@burnspbesq: They absolutely would have been decrying PBO’s presence had he attended, and the huge logistical nightmare would have furnished the fodder. That said, the administration probably should have dispatched Joe Biden or John Kerry to the scene or at least asked Eric Holder to show up since he was in town already. I don’t think it’s a huge deal, but it would have been a nice gesture to the French, wingnut opinion be damned.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Bibi showed up and was his typical douchy self. The Likudniks are better at being Republicans than our Republicans.
burnspbesq
@jl:
In honor of this great and wise non-action by the Supreme Court, I propose that the UC Merced athletic teams be renamed as the Delta Smelt, and a search for a suitable mascot costume begin immediately. Future contests between the Delta Smelt and the Banana Slugs should be required to be broadcast on ESPN.
trollhattan
@Violet: @jl:
Gawd love the farmers but our agribidnez giants have had their own way so long they simply can’t stop acting the sad, oppressed minority. It’s hard-wired and baked in. Hate those Westlands bastards especially, a view shared by a lot of other farmers FWIW.
burnspbesq
@Betty Cracker:
A copy of the front page of today’s NY Daily News showed up in my FB feed. I asked the person who posted it whether (among others) Prime Minister Harper, President Rousseff, and Premier LI also “let the world down.” I should go back and see whether there has been a rejoinder.
Violet
@Betty Cracker: Andrea Mitchell concern trolled the hell out of this on the Today Show this morning. She claimed Obama was at the White House, Joe Biden was at home, John Kerry was giving a speech in India (“So he was the only one with a legitimate commitment for why he couldn’t attend”) and Eric Holder was in France but for some reason didn’t show up. According to her it was a big, big deal. Cue concerned face.
trollhattan
Charlize Theron [hearts] North Korea.
Violet
@burnspbesq: Does the person who posted the front page of the paper have any idea who those three are?
jl
@trollhattan: Westlands water district corporations can catch up on their loan payments. Until then, they should be at the back of the line, behind all the farmers that follow the rules.
Central Valley agriculture, especially almonds, were unsustainable before the drought. They will need ever greater subsidies and demand ever more free or more heavily subsidized resources to keep their businesses going. It won’t happen.
Even as a proud Central Valley native, I don;t really care that 99.99 percent of almonds in the whole entire multiverse come from California, or what percent of US each production is in California (even if SC peaches are mainly good smashed up in baby food -sorry, Colbert that is the truth). CO, OR, WA, MI, and even NJ peaches, even GA and SC, can be just as good, and will be fresher and better in supermarkets back east. I hope to see more crops grown where there is water for them, which may not be CA for the time being.
Actually the south is not good for big fields of peaches. The savage humid climate requires extraordinary means for reliable production that is not pest and brown-rot infested. But peaches do fine in many parts of the US. As do several other CA crops. Be too damn warm after a few decades to grow a lot of stone fruits and almonds in CA anyway.
kindness
Not sure. Glad it was only the Ducks Wide Receiver that got booted for the game for smoking pot. Stupid law. It isn’t as if getting high is going to help someone at an athletic event. Oh well, go Ducks!
SRW1
@burnspbesq:
The absence of Obama did also make an appearance in the European press, fed of course by the stink the righties in the US made about it. And I gotta say the administration should have send someone, albeit not necessarily Obama himself, but where were Biden or Kerry?
Funnily enough, the larger part in the European press appears to be taken up by the stories of guys having butted their way into the first row during the march in Paris,
One of the two guys was Netanyahu, the other Sarkozy. Apparently, president Holland had signaled to Benji mouse that his presence might be somewhat controversial and when Netanyahu decided to attend anyway, Holland balanced him out by extending an invitation to Mahmoud Abbas.
Apparently, diplomatic protocol also mean that Nicolas Sarkozy was supposed to march in the fourth row behind family members of the victims, heads of state and politicians currently in office, and a row of their personal body guards. For some inexplicable reason, Sarkozy suddenly found himself in the first row and therefore appears rather prominently in many photos. The whole thing has given rise to a hilarious series of photoshopped pics, showing, among other things, that Sarkozy was also present at the parade on the occasion of the liberation of Paris, the Last Supper, and a whole bunch of other historic occasions.
kindness
@jl: Yea, living out in the valley I hear about this a whole bunch. You know what is really sad? Texas has more regulations on digging a well and pumping water that California does. In CA, you have to get the permit to dig the well. Once that well is dug though, you can pump every drop you can pump. Stupid for a state that is a natural desert. Of course Big (and small) Ag is fighting any regulations tooth and nail. The other sad thing? 3 years of drought means everyone got shorted on the water they were ‘supposed’ to get, well except S. Cal. I drive the California aquaduct via 580 every day going to work & coming home. That baby is full every day of water getting shipped to S. Cal. It ain’t the fish taking that water.
burnspbesq
@SRW1:
IIRC, traditional notions of protocol would have called for the U.S. Ambassador to attend, but after the flash-mob of European heads of government materialized (but, oddly enough, no heads of state – where were the kings and queens of Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, anyway?), that would have appeared inadequate.
delk
This bigot got another slap down
Clown’s LinkedIn profile lists:
Bingo Table set-up
September 1993 – August 1994
trollhattan
FWIW Gavin Newsom won’t be running for Boxer’s seat. Presume he wants Jerry’s and not DiFi’s, but this gives him two years or so to do that hard thinkin’ over it.
burnspbesq
I’m kinda wondering why the first mention I found of the indictment of two Albuquerque cops for murder in the death of a homeless person was in the National Post, which as far as I know continues to be a Canadian newspaper.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/01/12/two-police-officers-facing-murder-charges-in-killing-of-homeless-camper-near-albuquerque/#__federated=1
Why was I at the National Post website, you ask? I was checking to see whether the most rabidly right-wing major Canadian newspaper feels that Prime Minister Harper “let the world down” by not appearing in Paris yesterday. Apparently not.
dmbeaster
@trollhattan: Every one of those poor corporate farmers knew that their rights to water was of lower priority and that they would be cut off in a bad drought. They dont attack other farmers at the head of the line who get 100% (and some whose rights are superior to the fish). They just attack environmental interests as if they dont deserve a place in line. All of these jerks invested in their orchards knowing that they were at the back of the line, and would be cut off in a bad drought. Now that the business risk has become real, they whine about the unfairness of the problem they knowingly undertook and demand a rule change. Jerks.
Villago Delenda Est
@kindness: The NCAA being assholes…which is what they do all the time in their endless defense of indentured servitude for athletes.
trollhattan
@kindness: @dmbeaster:
Bad practices are as big a cause of the current pickle as the relentless heat and lack of rain. At least California finally has a law on the books to start monitoring every groundwater basin–a simple step that was only done in a few, previously. “Gummint overreach!” Suspect last year’s unprecedented pumping will permanently exhaust a lot of aquifers, or at least permanently reduce their future capacity.
And yet, the 2014 tomato harvest was a record.
jl
@trollhattan:
” And yet, the 2014 tomato harvest was a record. ”
Revenue to water ratio per unit of product higher for tomatoes than other crops, thought tomatoes are pretty water intensive. And record prices offered. Wonder if that will happen this year if no significant relief from drought.
forked tongue
If there was some kind of sportsball game tonight, here’s my prediction: several of the players got concussions that will materially damage their quality of life in the coming decades. Rah rah, enjoy, y’all!