#Taylor's current success? you know for a fact there's a big portion of us just consuming her stuff mostly so scooter cries himself to sleep | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kabillieu · 6 months

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Buckle in because this is an insane and meandering mini essay about my feelings of confusion regarding tswift. Cut for courtesy.

I have spent an outsized amount of time thinking about Taylor Swift over the past several weeks. First, the success of her Eras tour caught me off guard. While I understand she's a giant pop star, I had still underestimated how massive her pull and popular appeal is. Then I read a couple of really good essays about her appeal, especially as it regards to girls and girlhood, and the way she positions herself outside the male gaze. One of the essays is by my friend Elizabeth, and it's a letter-based email that I don't know that she would be comfortable with me sharing, so I won't, and the other one is this NYT essay that is hilarious and wonderful that I recommend reading.

I'm loosely a Swift fan in that every time she drops a new record I check it out, and I usually end up liking some of the songs on it. I found Evermore and Folklore largely boring, but I enjoyed big chunks of Reputation, Lover, and Midnights. What I don't understand is the big portion of her fanbase that follows her every move obsessively, and I don't especially get the way it seems she at least partially feeds into that. The current fascination with her new relationship is deeply weird and reminds me, to a degree, of the toxic paparazzi culture of the early and mid-2000s.

But even aside from all that, something about her bothers me, and that's what I'm trying to understand. I'm old enough to have observed her entire career, and I'm old enough to reconsider the way pop culture has negatively positioned many female artists and celebrities, including Swift. I'm also able to question my own internalized misogyny, and I think a lot of my dislike for Swift comes from that misogyny and, if I'm being very honest, jealousy.

Oh man, jealousy is such an ugly emotion. I have a theory most of us try to deny we feel jealousy and envy, even to ourselves. I've started naming that feeling whenever I feel it, and miraculously, it makes me feel 100% better because I'm not trying to deny it or cover it up. I'm just admitting it and then--to the best of my ability--letting it go. So, yeah. I have felt jealous of Swift's privilege, talent, work ethic, and beauty over the years, and that's partly why I haven't liked her very much. But there's something deeper at work, which is that Swift is a woman who has the audacity to be obviously ambitious. She's the most try-hard of try-hards. She cares so much about her success and what you think of it. Our culture hates women who are outwardly ambitious. Even in my very small corner of the art world, I have felt others' distaste for my own ambition, as if it makes my poetry less pure somehow. Men don't suffer from this sort of censure, btw. Men are expected to be ambitious by default.

I also have thought a lot about Swift's bald need for others' approval, and at first I thought I couldn't identify with it at all. I have mostly gone through my life without letting what others think of me change my actions. I do what I want to do, and I have felt proud of that. But then, I reconsidered what I feel to be a foundational value (the fact that I don't seek approval) in context with my identity as a writer, and more specifically a poet, and like DUH I spend nearly all of the time I'm working on publishing (which is different from writing) in search of others' approval. I want approval from literary journals. I want approval from presses. I want approval from gate-keeping literary and academic institutions. I want approval from readers. I want readers period. I constantly work for approval when I try to publish my writing.

This is not a deranged mini essay about how I'm like Taylor Swift. But it is a deranged mini essay about how I understand her better as an artist because I relate to her as an artist (on an obviously much smaller scale). I respect her hustle. I respect her desire for institutional approval. I respect her drive to always write a better song.

But at the end of the day there's this essential Taylorness to nearly everything she does that I find sort of baffling. Like she's stuck in an adolescent gear even though she's a 30-something woman. Part of my confusion is that I'm older than her and have left my girlishness behind most ways. And sometimes I wish I could have that girlishness back. I've been married 19 years. I have children. I have these brutal caretaking responsibilities (that I signed up for!) that cause me to decenter myself from my own life. Swift is a main character, and good for her! But a lot of the time I feel like a supporting character in my own life. And now we're back to jealousy and envy here. Naming these emotions helps!

Anyway, this is all to say that I came across this twitter exchange recently that crystalized my feelings toward Swift. I have mad respect for her, and I'm glad I've done all this deep thinking about creative longevity and female ambition and living an art-centered life, but these are my feelings about Swift boiled down to their essence:

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endearinglysarcastic · 5 years

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Taylor Swift’s Current Form of Hell

Some thoughts considering Taylor’s current situation. Feedback is welcome (especially if it can be added to the analysis!), but please don’t @ me to argue that she’s a bully or a bitch. I will eat you.

Firstly, let’s talk about age. Taylor is 29. Scott and Kim are 38, Kanye is 42. Famous was released in 2016, when Taylor was 26 and Kanye 39. So, not only was it released without her permission, not only was she filmed without her permission, not only did it defame her, not only was it implying sexual promiscuity in return for fame, not only was it entirely beyond the bounds of anything she would’ve agreed to regardless of Kim’s ‘proof’, she was 26. Let that sink in. There is more than a decade between her and Kanye - think about someone a decade older that you (a cousin, uncle or friend) and imagine how you would react (me, I’d go all Tangled on them, and hit them in the face with a saucepan; and that’s my calm reaction). Then remember how you were at 19 - considering that, in 2009, when Kanye said ‘imma let you finish BUT’ she was 19. Fast forward a little to 2016, and Kanye has 2 children, a wife and an established music career. He should be the elder, the one that understands the industry, the one that works with RESPECT. Taylor is only just older than his second youngest sister-in-law - and you best believe that if something like this happened to Kendall, Kanye would be coming after them. But this ‘feud’ was deemed appropriate, Famous was deemed ‘funny’. Scooter and Justin Bieber and various radio hosts etc have decided that all this is ‘not a big deal’. But there we were, Taylor was 26 and being TAGGED by people a decade older than her in this revenge porn horridness. Is it because we now think it’s okay to be horrible to white girls? Is that it? Is it because she’s American? She certainly isn’t a Trump fan, so we can rule that out. Maybe it’s because Kanye was threatened - maybe it’s because he was made to apologise by Queen B and he’s been looking to reassert his masculinity ever since. Maybe it’s his own past, insecurities, problems. But that in no means makes it okay; nor does it condone the behaviour of his wife and associates like Scooter. Hence, we have defamation, revenge porn and cyber bullying, all of which started when Taylor Swift, pop princess supreme, was 19, 26 and now 29.

One of the people who brought this 2016 pain about, now owns the rights to her music. Sounds a bit iffy (it still has her name on it! you cry), but let’s think about this legally. This means that if Taylor wants to work with, rerelease, remix or reconsider any of HER prior works, she has to a) work with Scooter, b) have the changes approved by Scooter and c) give a portion of the profits to Scooter. And yes, kiddies, that means concerts too. Performing her music, at her concerts, for her fans, is giving her abuser a profit. Imagine having to do that with a high school bully, or say, prior boss that you never really liked, with a report or a paper. Objectively these things are worth nothing, but you did the majority of the work; despite this, it’s technically part of their group or company, so it’s theirs too. It’s like sharing custody of your child with an abusive and absent ex. Except, that child is worth a literal fortune and took 14 years to create; and you’re well aware that your ex will completely abuse their side of the contract for their own amusement. Furthermore, while she’s sharing those rights, we have to remember that Taylor has no legal recourse - he owns the masters by CONTRACT, that she no doubt signed at one point or another. Now while I have things to say about the lawyers that advised her to sign that contract, please remember that she was just 14 when she entered the industry and that a human female brain does not fully develop until at least 23 (men are develop by 27 but this is about Taylor so I’ll refrain from making that joke today). Business savvy she might be now, but that comes with experience and practice and a good team. People who are good at their job, understand your vision and you trust entirely are hard to find; especially when your vocation is as all encompassing as Taylor’s must be. Perhaps there was a mistake there, perhaps she shouldn’t have signed the contract; but hindsight is 20/20, and perhaps blaming Taylor isn’t the most progressive thing to do. What is both interesting and considerably more gross, is that Taylor was offered a chance to, quote, ‘earn back’ her masters - not only is this bribery, it’s an attempt to further abuse and power over one of the biggest earners in today’s music industry. With such a power over her, there is no way that Big Machine will ever willingly let her go - perhaps they’d enter into a never-ending negotiation; for every album she produces (which would belong to Big Machine), she earns back a prior album that belonged to Big Machine. Sounds fabulous and abusive, doesn’t it? If you are so naive as to think that she was not a guiding factor on the purchase of Big Machine, please reconsider your brain. No one wants to buy the cow if you can get the milk for free - which essentially is what Scooter did, plus now he gets to kick the cow and the calf if and when he wants to. Lovely, right? However, please consider that in signing any new contact under this offer, one can see definite similarities with Kesha’s situation, though the abuse hopefully be only mental and emotional. Taylor has made an incredibly hard and painful choice; she could leave her legacy behind in favour of happier life, or continue with her legacy and ‘earn it back’ and be generally miserable. This desire to make Taylor ‘submit’ is misogynistic, horrible and really really gross. Hence we can conclude that not only has she been abused, bullied and used, we may now note that she has no way of ‘winning’ this argument - in that she may never get her masters back without paying a very serious life consequence.

Taylor has posted a 2 paragraph statement on Tumblr. (Fun reminder - I’m not even halfway done and I’ve written a longer defence that she did.) She is being called attention seeking (‘turning the the public has worked for her before’ - what my local FM radio told me), bullying, gaslighting etc etc. which are all things we’ve heard about before in relation to her. Certainly, Taylor, like other people in the media spotlight, has done things that people don’t approve of or deem problematic (because she, like all others, is just a person) but this by no means should overshadow her present situation. You don’t need to be a Taylor fan to consider this issue problematic; the facts alone are indicative enough. There is no element of like, love, favouritism or adoration that even needs to be considered here. Taylor is being judged, abused and publicly bullied as she dared to speak her mind and feelings about her own works. If Scooter had his way, we would revert to simply calling her hysterical, and strip her of all capacity to reason - god forbid a woman in the music industry be of sane mind and conviction. Despite this, we have to note that these events, this treatment, these discussions have led to one of the most prominent and successful women of the 21st century retreating from public, and posting her defence, in her own words, on TUMBLR, which is widely considered a niche site when compared to say Twitter or Instagram. Hence, we must ask ourselves, why would Taylor choose Tumblr? She has been so widely supported on Instagram and Twitter in the past. Maybe this is where she feels supported and like she is least chance to be attacked; what does that tell you about her headspace? Maybe it’s where she sees the least tagging, comments of ownership, masters related from people who are meant to be her colleagues - cyber bullying is, effectively, so harmful because it can truly follow you anywhere. Imagine the outrage if this had been done to Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes. But it wouldn’t happen to them - not because producers and owners are incapable, but because they do not deem in necessary for them to need to show who the ‘alpha’ is. But having Taylor as the more powerful, pervasive person seems to offend many men to the core. Hence, maybe Taylor posted it is simply for herself, knowing it would be unedited and seen by people who might sympathise without yarns of criticism that related to the anatomy between her legs. Certainly, I know I would want to have my say for my own peace of mind as well as for my mental health - and I’m just a law student with 7 followers. How does someone so wildly popular feel so unsafe in the social media sphere? This. This bs is why.

So why are we just hearing about all this now? Well that’s just it; Taylor. She has brought this to the public attention. She is not so naive as to think that there would be no backlash - she’s been the victim of that too many times. Taylor, despite knowing all of this, despite standing alone, despite the lack of media, social media, peer and male support, has said something. She has expressed her thoughts and feelings, knowing she would be labelled unstable and narcissistic - because that is the fastest way to depreciate and devalue anything legitimate or threatening that comes from a woman or girl. Taylor has, in a sense, reported her abuse; except she reported it to the public. She has been bullied, cyber bullied, defamed, indicted, disliked and gaslighted. In her position, many would be anxious, depressed, scared, paranoid, running crying to their parents (cough me cough). Instead, she has made a rational, intelligent and self-caring decision that led to a well written statement, conveying her feelings in a timely and eloquent manner. She is effectively telling us that Times Up, and it’s coming for the music industry. As always, she has handled this in the most dignified and elegant of ways, while Scooter and his supporters seem to be borderline aroused at the pain they’re inflicting. How anyone can get their kicks out of another persons pain will always be beyond me, though that seems to be the way women are accustomed to men acting. Taylor is, as she has often been, at the forefront of changing social issues and bearing the brunt of the backlash in the public eye. I hope that there are other young women and young artists that are watching and listening - she might very well break the glass ceiling - again.

Taylor has gone through an immense amount of pain throughout her music career - she’s been labelled an attention, money and boyfriend seeking crybaby for over a decade. The behaviour of men in the music industry is neither appropriate or acceptable. I do not accept it - we, the public, cannot accept it.

Although I know it is of little help, I will no longer be listening to or streaming Taylor’s old work in an effort to support her. I will also not be streaming or purchasing any other Big Machine productions until her work is returned to her. I will also be signing this petition in her favour. Please consider doing the same - Katy Perry already did.

I hope Taylor is okay, I hope she is caring for herself, I hope there is some legal action she can take. I hope Lover is wildly successful and her heart is full. Remember that this is not about receipts or feuds or drama. This is about the cruel and unfair treatment of a woman in the music industry and the escalation of that when it became public information. This is about changing the conversation and changing the working conditions. This is for more than just Taylor; this is part changing a toxic culture, where cyberbulling and revenge porn and spiteful purchases for ‘funzies’ (and the torment of others) is appropriate, provided it is against a woman. Whatever you might say or think of her, this is an example of injustices that occur to women everywhere and everyday. We have proven only one thing with these injustices, and that is that you can kick Taylor Swift down are hard as you can - she has discovered feminism and she’s going to get back up. She might not be perfect, she might not be your favourite, but she isn’t a push over. Taylor Swift is taking up space and taking no shit, and I am here for it.

Petition: https://www.change.org/p/taylor-swift-make-taylor-swift-re-release-her-6-albums

You can find Taylor’s statement here: https://taylorswift.tumblr.com/post/185958366550/for-years-i-asked-pleaded-for-a-chance-to-own-my

You can also check her Tumblr out here, though this is less related to this analysis and more if you want a good giggle: @taylorswift

#Taylor Swift #lover #law #scooter braun #kaynewest #kim kardashian #masters #feminism #timesup #famous #rant #analysis

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daveandtrev · 3 years

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The 2020 Andre Johnson Sweepstakes League write-up

Friends of the Andre Johnson Sweepstakes League, welcome. I am pleased (no really, I am excited) to bring you a breakdown of the AJSL as it blessed our lives in the one-of-a-kind year of 2020. Below you will find a mix of analysis and lighthearted fun aimed at taking a first pass at what the heckfire happened this year from start to finish. We’ve got analysis on the draft, injuries and schedule plus some fun awards to give out. I won’t buffalo you any longer, lets get to it.

Draft Day Analysis

Draft day analysis interpretation: I tried to objectively pick the best teams based on my personal draft rankings (subjective draft rankings, objective draft analysis…sort of follows?). Here’s the methodology: I assigned a value to every player for above average play (in 0.25 increments). It’s essentially five tiers (+0.0 = starter, but could be replaced; +0.25 = contributing starter; +0.5 = solid starter; +0.75 = strong starter that will create a positional advantage; +1.0 = elite starter providing a distinct positional advantage). This all makes sense in my head, and it should make more sense when you look at the table. I then added up points for each team’s best possible starting lineup according to my points system and voila; Dave Stark’s handicapping of the AJSL.

A couple of notes:

· Players are listed in the positions as there were drafted, with highest spend creating the starting lineup. For my points system, I subbed in bench players if they had a higher value than the starter.

· I cheated on Christian McCaffrey’s value: he was a +1.25 in my book. Clearly the best player in the game with even higher upside than the traditional studs.

A few things that turned out like I thought

· The running QBs outside of Lamar (Dak, Kyler, Russ, and DeShaun all avg 22.0+ fantasy pts/gm and sit top 7 at QB)

· The QBs at +0.0 (Baker, Carr, Danny Dimes, Kirk Cousins, and Jimmy G basically ride the merry-go-round from one bye week fill-in to the next. Tannehill and Cousins maybe qualify as +0.25 players now, but neither averages over 20+ pts/gm)

· Jonathan Taylor +0.0 (His value has been everywhere this year. Marlon Mack was the only reason I had him ranked this low. When Mack went down I pegged him for +0.75 with the possibility to go +1.0…and then nothing materialized until late into the year)

· Devin Singletary +0.0 (Started hearing whispers of Zack Moss splitting carries + Josh Allen hogs goal line rushes)

A few places where I was dead wrong

· Stefon Diggs +0.0 (Turns out, Josh Allen actually got better - +10% Completion % in 2020)

· Josh Allen +0.5 (Averaging 24.7 pts/gm which would have been the QB2 overall last year by almost 3 pts/gm. Currently QB4)

· Kyler Murray +0.75 (Not nearly high enough on him. Averaging 26.5 pts/gm as the QB1 overall. Playing at a +1.0 level)

· DK Metcalf +0.25 (Seattle hired their lead chef to work full time)

· Lamar Jackson +1.0, Mark Andrews +0.75 (Uhhh, why is this team broken?)

· Kenyan Drake +0.75 (Beware the extravagant 8 game sample size that says someone is a world-beater)

· Zach Ertz +0.75 (Is this the cliff year at 30 years old? How did Tony G catch 83 balls at age 37?)

· Aaron Rod Gers +0.25 (Yeah he’s a +0.75 guy now…should have known that drafting the backup QB would light a fire under Aaron: we’ve only seen this from Alex Smith and Joe Flacco in 2 of the last 3 years…Wait, why hasn’t this applied to Wentz yet?)

· Davante Adams +0.75 (Good golly, A-Aron’s resurgence means Davante is almost on +1.25 level when he is healthy)

· Keenan Allen +0.25 (This was all about Tyrod…then we found out that Justin Herbert was interning specifically for Keenan Allen and the Chargers med staff decided to euthanize Tyrod)

· TJ Hockenson +0.0 (2nd year leap puts him at TE3 overall. $20 player next year?)

· Chris Herndon +0.0 (When you read too many draft articles, you begin to believe that an Adam Gase coached player might actually become an average contributor at his position…ha!)

Injury-ruined seasons

· Saquon, Michael Thomas +1 (Biggest team-killers to date by far)

· CMC at +1.25 (Still overall #1 when he plays)

· Dak at +0.75 (Was playing like a true +1 on par with Mahomes before going down)

· Zeke at +1 (Dak died and then Dallas decided to start “Gucci DiNucci”…yeah that didn’t go well)

· OBJ +0.5 (Traded to Cristian’s team where he put up a combined 3.5 fantasy pts in 2 games started)

· Courtland Sutton +0.25 (After space-cadeting Sutton’s auction bid, we got our “Ball don’t lie” moment a few weeks later. Trevor is shrugging as he reads this.)

Great, let’s move on. Luck, imagined as either dice rolls or Luck Dragons depending on who you talk to, plays a pretty big part in fantasy success every year. Too many injuries? See you next year. Tough schedule? Hope for a good tiebreaker and maybe you can sneak into the playoffs with the #4 spot. These are probably the most talked about facets of the game since they are beyond our control and create the classic “if only I didn’t have that injury back in high school, i’d have crushed you guys” cop-out that we’ve all heard for years. Let’s see who really has a case to be upset, shall we?

Let’s start with one of my favorites – every team’s record if we played in a league where the top 6 scores secured a win each week (in lieu of head to head matchups). This is a much more “fair” look at how your team performed on a weekly basis when you throw out the schedule which is always a subject of scrutiny, consternation, and conspiracy theories each season.

There you have it. Good news is, the top 5 in our league standings would be the exact same top 5 if we played the other way. The schedule hasn’t defrauded anyone of a 2020 playoff spot. Bad news is, the bottom of this list is mildly shocking. Cristian has struggled all year for wins and this shows that his team hasn’t been half bad – but he has essentially lost out on 4 wins due to schedule. Yikes. Phil on the other hand was in playoff contention up until week 12, whereas his team has the fewest expected wins in the league….Of course for those with conspiratorial thoughts, you’ll notice the Stark brothers combine for +7 “lucky” wins due to schedule. Of course the Stark wife had to bite the bullet to make it look fair (-2 “lucky” wins). I’ll let everyone digest that and make their own judgments. (Where is that clause in the constitution involving starting a new league without the commish? This is evidence!)

The next “luck metric” that dominates our chat conversation and generally elicits “I got screwed, feel bad for me” self-pity arguments would be games lost to injury. Everyone knows it sucks and everyone experiences it to some degree every year. And if you play long enough, you will get hit by the double ACL tear/broken collarbone/never-healing ankle injury to all of your star players and be left at a severe disadvantage. It’s gonna be okay Sport, put on a brave face and hit the waiver wire. Come back next year and clap secretly at 3pm on Monday when Schefty tweets the next guy’s RB1 season-ender. (After the large exhale that it didn’t happen to your RB1 of course.) Ending rant, just know that if you experienced the injury season from hell, the rest of the league knows that it’s part of the fantasy business and are very relieved that it didn’t happen to them. Empathy runs high, sympathy runs low. (And I just removed my ability to ever complain publicly about my team’s injuries by writing this now.)

After all the talk has subsided, let’s check facts. First table: mid-game injuries. These are games where players play a much reduced role and typically produce dreadful fantasy finishes. There’s a bit of subjectivity here (if a player plays 3 quarters and gets hurt, I don’t count that as a mid game injury. But if he plays ½ or less of his normal playing time, it would count.) I also add mid-game benching to QBs because they fit the description as fantasy wreckers due to an unforeseen cutback in playing time. Here is the Commissioner’s official list:

Congrats on that title Jason, I know you were hoping for it. Just know, you weren’t THAT far ahead of the rest of us. Mon and Trevor on the other hand can only blame poor performance on their season’s disappointments (or better yet, the schedule!)

So I buried the lead a bit on Mr. Montgomery here, because the next table should give him his share of justice on 2020 injuries.

So the above list is missed games + mid-game injuries for drafted starters and traded players updated through week 13 (except for those with season long injuries – I went ahead and added week 14 there). Jason, there’s your proof. Nobody deserves to bellyache more than you, friend. 19 of those games were from QBs (Dak/Jimmy G) which added to a smattering of missed games from the rest of the roster (Godwin 4, Ridley 3, Aaron Jones 2). I haven’t tracked this before, but I imagine that this year was significantly worse than others (more soft tissue injuries and COVID positives were the biggest culprits.) The hope is that 2021 gives us a bit of a reprieve here.

Before we conclude, I recognize that there is a portion of the audience who prefers the entertainment value of this yearly endeavor, so I’m going to do my best to hand out a few fun awards. Without further ado, the 2020 AJSL Dundees (this award style hasn’t possibly been overdone, right?)

Dundee to The Scorned Lover: Mr. Jordan Swavely on behalf of Henry Ruggs.

While I wrote this tribute in his farewell on the group chat, it bears repeating: 7 pts or less scored by Ruggs in 6 straight games, starts him again for a 7th week and only a 50 yard bomb on the last play of the game saves Ruggs from another 3 point performance. Totaling the points for those 7 starts, Ruggs scored 36 points for a 5.1 average. Ruggs averaged 3.4 targets/gm in these contests. You do you, Swave. Go and get your man.

Dundee for the Best Team Name: Mr. Greg Poelman, ShlongBarry Sanders

Any reference including a dong and our beloved college town is going to score high on both the Dude and Nostalgia scales. Plus a Barry Sanders nod, we like that.

Dundee for the Best Team Picture: Mrs. Monica Stark on behalf of Presidential Security

Any time you can get combine Greg Poelman and The Donald in Photoshop and it doesn’t even look that fake, you have my attention and affection. And now you have a Dundee to go along with it. Well done.

Honorable mention: Monica’s Team, Bring Out Your Dead

Golden Tickets to the Winning Waiver Warriors: Mr. Scooter Nelson, James Robinson; Mr. Blake Grundy, Justin Herbert; Mr. Jack Holmer, Justin Jefferson

Since everyone is bidding for the “winning lottery tickets” of the waiver pool, we’re going to give out Golden Tickets to those that struck waiver wire gold this season. Scooter milked 11 starts out of Robinson who averaged 17.6 pts/gm during that span. Robinson has been the RB4 overall since the week 2 pickup. Grundy picked up Herbert for week 3 and never looked back, banking 10 starts at 22.5 pts/gm (He’s the QB7 in that time frame). Holmer nabbed Jefferson before Week 4 and was rewarded with the WR4 from that point on. Impressively he only benched him once, refusing to play him against his beloved Bears. This is the dream of every late Tuesday night and you guys reaped the spoils. Well done, gents.

Dundee to the Wounded Wavier Warriors: Mr. Phil Stark, Devonta Freeman; Mr. Jack Holmer, Darrell Henderson; Mr. Trevor Allison, Nyheim Hines

Big money, No whammy. That’s the goal. Of course more times than not, the reality is…more like this. Phil emptied out the pocketbook early on in the season after the Saquon injury to grab his replacement with a winning bid of $78 on Devonta (next highest bid: $15). Devonta responded with five games played, two of which resulted in 1 point showings. Then he followed Saquon to IR and Soape picked up the true workhorse of the Giants backfield in Wayne Gallman, who hasn’t pickup up less than 10 points in six straight games. Ouch. It took $54 to secure the rights to Darrell Henderson after week 2, seemingly the new Rams lead RB. Unfortunately Jack’s faith manifested at the wrong times: 5 starts of Henderson yielded 6.3 pts/gm, while Henderson’s two strong games (18.5 and 20.3 pts) were enjoyed on Holmer’s bench. Not fun. $46 was the bid that beat out 7 other bidders after week 1 for Nyheim Hines’s services, after which Trevor was rewarded with 5 straight games of 8 points or less. After cutting him loose over the bye week, Hines busted out for four double digit games in six tries, music no doubt to Trevor’s ears. A Dundee for your troubles, boys.

The “Fantasy Football Was A Lot More Fun Last Year” Dundee: Mr. Cristian Driver

For every obvious reason. Where did that championship belt get to?

Dundee for a Fun and Easy Season: Mr. David Stark

Injuries, COVID surprises, bad schedules, underperformance? Didn’t seem that big of a deal to me.

Dundee for Most Attempts to Defeat a Hornet’s Nest: Mr. Jason Montgomery

Similar to our favorite Office handyman Nate, Jason was tasked with eliminating the danger of his crumbling fantasy season created by the aforementioned injury bug. Both hailing from the historically-rich metropolis of “La Philadelphia”, what ensued after Jason’s 4-0 start pairs Nate and Jason together even further. Jason utilized a league-high 20 unique waiver pickups that entered the starting lineup this season. Results were bleak; the fast start was followed by a 2-7 record that signaled victory to the opposition. Maybe try the bow and arrow next time?

Receiver Corps Dundee of Excellence: Mr. Joel Soape

It only took 3 name changes to figure out which WR was needed (Red Solo Kupp -> Mike’d Up -> The Adams Bomb) , but Soape finally landed on the right guy for the job by calling on Davante Adams and his 22.1 pts/gm this year (easily the WR1 in this metric). Somehow Corey Davis (left for dead after last year) has had a career resuscitation on this team as well, dropping a 30 burger in week 12. The Receiver Corps salutes your dedication to their fraternity, Mr. Soape.

That’s all for now guys. Full disclosure, I have another 1k-2k words written that takes a deep dive into each of our performances at 1) waiver pickups, 2) positional scoring, and 3) sit/start decisions. Maybe this would be most helpful for a post-season article as it encompasses your overall strategy and ability to aid your team’s output. Look for that at some point in the future. For now, I hope you enjoyed this meaty entrée. Thanks for another great season and allowing me to bring you another fun recap, everyone!

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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My Fellow Republicans, Please Follow the Facts https://nyti.ms/2KRCUKk

It is clear, yes.

Interesting that so many FORMER members of Congress in the GOP are willing to break with Trump, but no CURRENT members of Congress will do it.

Seems fishy, like somebody has run a massive kompromat operation on the sitting GOP. Explains Graham, Stefanik, Rubio, Kennedy.

Republican (former) senator : "From what I have read, it seems clear that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was subjected to a shakedown — pressured to become a foreign participant in President Trump’s re-election campaign, a violation of the law."

My Fellow Republicans, Please Follow the Facts

It seems clear to me that the president of Ukraine was subjected to a shakedown.

By Slade Gorton, Mr. Gorton is a former Republican senator from Washington | Published November 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 26, 2019

In March of 1974, as a young state attorney general, I reluctantly called for President Richard Nixon’s resignation amid revelations of abuses of power related to Watergate. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. As a Republican, I didn’t enjoy breaking with my party or my president. As an elected official and practical politician, I didn’t particularly enjoy the implications of turning against someone who had comfortably carried Washington State just two years earlier. None of it was pleasant, but I believed it was the right thing to do on the facts and on the merits.

John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.” Forty-five years after Mr. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached by the House, the facts should be the focus of every elected official, Republican or Democrat, as they decide what to do about another president facing impeachment and a possible Senate trial.

To my fellow Republicans, I give this grave and genuine warning: It’s not enough merely to dismiss the Ukraine investigation as a partisan witch hunt or to hide behind attacks against the “deep state,” or to try to find some reason to denounce every witness who steps forward, from decorated veterans to Trump megadonors.

History demands that we all wrestle with the facts at hand. They are unavoidable. Fifty years from now, history will not accept the position that impeachment was a referendum on the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. It must be a verdict reached on the facts.

My judgment so far as an objective observer is that there are multiple actions on this president’s part that warrant a vote of impeachment in the House, based on corroborated testimony that Mr. Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pressured leaders of Ukraine to investigate the Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden and his family.

From what I have read, it seems clear that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was subjected to a shakedown — pressured to become a foreign participant in President Trump’s re-election campaign, a violation of the law.

Several credible witnesses have testified to the existence of a quid pro quo, including William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine; Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the White House’s top Ukraine expert; and Gordon Sondland, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the European Union. They and others have testified that there was a push for politically motivated investigations, and three of them were so alarmed that they attempted to report their concerns up the chain of command at the National Security Council.

Are they to be believed? Here’s my bottom line: That’s what an impeachment inquiry and a Senate trial are designed to find out. That’s why there’s a process under the Constitution.

But make no mistake: This is precisely the kind of crisis Alexander Hamilton feared. In Federalist No. 75, he warned that a president might be tempted to betray the interests of the country for his own benefit, “to sacrifice his duty to his interest, which it would require superlative virtue to withstand”; that “an avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the acquisition of wealth”; that a president might “make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his treachery to his constituents.”

Given the temptations a president might have in dealing with foreign powers, Hamilton’s solution was equally clear: Congress should be involved. “The participation of the whole or a portion of the legislative body in the office of making them,” he wrote of treaties. And in the same vein, the founders gave Congress the power to check a president accused of abusing the power of his office. They expected Congress to render its judgment on the facts.

So, to my fellow Republicans who have been willing only to attack the process, I say: engage in the process. If the president is innocent, use the process to surface those exculpatory facts so that Congress and the country can agree whether or not Mr. Trump should be removed from office. The facts — not rhetoric — should answer this question: Is there an offense serious enough to undo the results of the 2016 election?

A heavy burden to meet, but not an impossible one.

Here’s what I know: Neither the country nor the Constitution is served by a partisan shouting match divorced from the facts, a process boycotted by one side refusing to engage on the merits. John Adams is still right 250 years later: Facts are stubborn things. Facts are what should determine whether a stubborn president stays in office. Republicans, don’t fight the process, follow the facts wherever they lead, and put country above party.

_______

Slade Gorton was a Republican senator from Washington from 1981 to 1987, and again from 1989 to 2001.

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Republicans’ Big Lie About Trump and Russia

Collusion wasn’t a hoax and Trump wasn’t exonerated.

By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist | Published Nov. 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted Nov. 26, 2019

There are two very big lies that Donald Trump and his sycophants have used, through aggressive, bombastic repetition, to shape the public debate about impeachment, and about Trump’s legitimacy more broadly.

The first big lie is that “the people” elected Trump, and that the constitutional provision of impeachment would invalidate their choice. In fact, Trump is president only because a constitutional provision invalidated the choice of the American people. Trump lost the popular vote and might have lost the Electoral College without Russian interference, and yet many Democrats and pundits have been bullied into accepting the fiction that he has democratic, and not just constitutional, legitimacy.

The second big lie is that Russia didn’t help elect Trump, and that the president has been absolved of collusion. It’s true that the report by Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, did not find enough evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russian state actors. But the Mueller report found abundant evidence that the campaign sought Russian help, benefited from that help and obstructed the F.B.I. investigation into Russian actions. His investigation resulted in felony convictions for Trump’s former campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, personal lawyer, first national security adviser, and longtime political adviser, among others.

Had public life in America not been completely deformed by blizzards of official lies, right-wing propaganda and the immovable wall of Republican bad faith, the Mueller report would have ended Trump’s minoritarian presidency. Instead, something utterly perverse happened. Democrats, deflated by the Mueller report’s anticlimactic rollout, decided to move on rather than keep the focus on Trump’s world-historic treachery. Republicans, meanwhile, started screaming about a “Russia hoax” ostensibly perpetrated on their dear leader. Among them was the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, who in 2016 was surreptitiously recorded telling his congressional colleagues that he thinks President Vladimir Putin of Russia pays Trump. “Swear to God,” he said at the time.

This brings us to where we are now. Democrats understand that the Ukraine scandal is an outgrowth of the Russia scandal — as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last month, with Trump, “all roads seem to lead to Putin.” Yet they’ve made the political calculation that reopening the broader story of how Trump has been compromised by Russia is a political loser.

In her closed-door deposition last month, the former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill suggested that Putin may have targeted Trump well before he entered politics. Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, tried to clarify: “Why do you believe that Putin was targeting Donald Trump from his days as a businessman?” Hill responded, “Because that’s exactly what President Putin and others were doing.” No one followed up on this when Hill testified publicly.

Rather, it’s Republicans, with their heroic capacity for shamelessness, who want to talk about Russia. They’ve set out to investigate the investigators, trying to make efforts to uncover the truth about Trump’s Russia connections, rather than the connections themselves, into a scandal. And now they’re trying to expand their big lie about Russia to cover Ukraine as well. The president, McCarthy said last month, “was trying to get to the bottom, just as every American would want to know, why did we have this Russia hoax that actually started within Ukraine.”

Because Republicans have been so successful in shrouding the origins of the Russia investigation in a miasma of misinformation, I hope some talented filmmaker makes a movie out of the new book by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, “Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump.” Simpson and Fritsch are the co-founders of Fusion GPS, the research firm that investigated Trump during the 2016 campaign, first for the conservative Washington Free Beacon, and then for a lawyer for the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was Fusion GPS that hired the British ex-spy Christopher Steele to look into Trump’s Russia connections, and it sits at the center of countless pro-Trump conspiracy theories. When Republicans controlled the House, Fritsch told me on Monday, “The only bank records that were subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee were ours.”

“Crime in Progress” is the best procedural yet written about the discovery of Trump’s Russia ties. It demolishes a number of right-wing talking points, including the claim that the Steele dossier formed the basis of the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence inquiry into Trump. (The Justice Department inspector general’s report on the origins of the Russia investigation will reportedly disprove this canard once and for all.) But it also makes plain what many Republicans knew before the 2016 election, even if they’ve now pretended to forget it. For years, Trump was financially entangled with organized crime as well as with Kremlin-friendly oligarchs, and by keeping those entanglements secret, he gave Putin leverage over him from the moment he took office.

Write Simpson and Fritsch, “In the end, the Mueller probe sidestepped the question that so unnerved Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele in the summer of 2016: Was the president of the United States under the influence of a foreign adversary?” Republicans have used all the power at their command to defame people who’ve asked this question. Perhaps that’s because otherwise they’d have to take seriously all the evidence that the answer is yes.

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Trump and the Military Do Not Share the Same Values

The armed forces are not an extension of the White House.

By Richard J. Danzig and Sean O'Keefe | Published Nov. 25, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 26, 2019 |

Mr. Danzig and Mr. O’Keefe were Navy secretaries under, respectively, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

“Get back to business!” With this tweet, President Trump directed his secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, to stop the naval officers charged with oversight of the SEALs from disciplining one of their own. That order was confirmed on Monday by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and over the weekend, Mr. Spencer was fired.

There are three problems with Mr. Trump’s action. The first is that it is very much the Navy’s business — and every military’s business — to maintain, as the military so often recites and Mr. Spencer put it in his final letter to the president, “good order and discipline.” In conducting their “business,” our military services are not and must not be commanded in support of political ends, as Mr. Trump was apparently doing here.

How the president chooses to value order and discipline in his White House, and if at all, is of real concern to all Americans. But the military is not an extension of his White House. Some may argue that all actions by a president may have some political component, yet instead of constraining that component, this action by this president celebrates and encourages it.

The second problem intensifies the first. Contamination from the president’s approach is amplified when his judgment is largely shaped by television commentators and his decision announced by tweet. The military has well-established procedures for assuring good order and discipline. They begin by eliciting a judgment by peers. No one is as well positioned to balance the exigencies of combat and the demands of law and ethics as a panel of fellow sailors, Marines, airmen or soldiers.

Wise presidents let those who have made the sacrifices of combat — and who depend upon one another in combat — state first what they conclude. Such presidents provide opportunity for senior military officers and relevant civilians to add perspectives. They may not, in the end, agree. But to say at the beginning that the president mandates one and only one outcome deprecates the value of the SEALs’ judgment.

Finally, there is the judgment itself. An American service member shared a photograph of himself with a corpse along with the message: “I have got a cool story for you when I get back. I have got my knife skills on.” Our president’s endorsement of the perpetrator will be taken as a representation of our values. Our own troops, many of them teenagers, will be misled by the president’s sense, or lack of sense, of honor.

Our military engages over 1.3 million young men and women on active duty. Many will be thrust into situations of extreme risk. They, and hundreds of thousands of reservists, look to their commanders, their comrades and their training to find the proper course in the face of great challenges. All officials, and most of all presidents, should respect senior officers, the judgment of peers and the values articulated in training.

In his final letter, Mr. Spencer, a Trump appointee, put it well: “As secretary of the Navy, one of the most important responsibilities I have to our people is to maintain good order and discipline throughout the ranks. I regard this as deadly serious business.” He added, “The rule of law is what sets us apart from our adversaries.”

Our president should aspire to the same view. His values are not those of our military. It will do grievous damage to our armed services if they become so.

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"Trump cares about Trump. Trump cares about the Trump brand and the Trump show. Trump will reduce this country to rubble before he will submit to correction. And, he’ll portray our destruction as his greatest show."

For Trump, Impeachment Is a Show

Washington is Hollywood and Trump is the leading man.

By Charles M. Blow, Opinion Columnist | Published Nov. 24, 2019 | New York Times | Posted November 26, 2019 |

The point is proven. The corruption has been established.

It’s rather simple: Donald Trump abused his power as president to extort a foreign country into investigating a political rival.

There is no remaining doubt that this happened.

Furthermore, the conspiracy of people involved in the execution of this plan, as well as pursuing the debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine that interfered in the 2016 election to help Hillary Clinton, rather than Russia interfering to help Trump, is also coming more into focus.

It is clear that Trump has committed impeachable offenses. (Some people around him may also have committed prosecutable crimes.) The only remaining question is whether some honorable Republicans might join Democrats in voting for whichever articles of impeachment might be drawn up in the House of Representatives.

At present, it appears that few or none would do so. That is a sad indictment of our country and of the Republican Party.

I have contended from the beginning that impeachment was important regardless of Republican support, regardless of the chances of conviction and removal in the Senate.

Impeachment is important because our system of democracy is being tested. The Constitution is being tested. And, not moving to impeach would in a way enshrine abuse of power as a precedent.

And yet, it is still remarkable to see the way partisans are choosing to behave in this moment. It is still remarkable to see the disinformation coming from conservative media. It is still remarkable to see just how many fellow citizens have bought into deception.

This is one of the great successes (if that word can be used in this way) of the Trump presidency: He has succeeded in eroding truth and bending reality among those who support him. He has succeeded in commandeering conservatism and twisting it into something nearly unrecognizable.

And now, all of Trump’s supporters and defenders are erecting a protective hedge around him. The cult of Trumpism can’t be allowed to fall.

They are devoted to Trump’s version of the truth and his version of reality. In it, he is a tough-talking tough guy who uses colorful language and sharp elbows to change things in their interest and in their favor. In this reality, he is unfairly and incessantly maligned by those obsessed with hating him as a person and for his supposed successes. In this reality, Trump is being bullied.

Also, nothing said about him is to be believed, no matter who says it and how much proof is presented. Conversely, believing him, a compulsive liar, happens by default.

For instance, poll results published last month by Monmouth University found that 67 percent of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning voters believe Trump’s baseless claim that Joe Biden probably did pressure Ukrainian officials to keep them from investigating his son’s business interests there, while just 16 percent said Trump made promises or put pressure on Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden, even though Trump had already admitted it and the partial transcript confirms it.

This is both confounding and frightening. How is a democracy supposed to survive when this many people deny a basic common set of facts? How does one engage in political debate with someone lost in a world of lies?

And of course, this is just as Trump wants it. He has spent his entire life bending the truth and flat-out lying. It was one thing when he did it as a private citizen, to puff up his chest and inflate his wealth. There were no real consequences for the country in the telling of those lies.

But now he has brought his “lie loudly” tactic to the White House, and he has realized that there is a section of America hungry for a show, willing to believe anything the carnival barker says and be thoroughly entertained by it.

Trump realized something that few people are willing to acknowledge: That politics is theater first. It is about appearance and performance to a disturbing degree. People want a story, a vision, a fascinating protagonist. Politics loves a star.

The derisive cliché, “Washington is Hollywood for ugly people,” coined by Democratic strategist Paul Begala, has lasted so long because there is a grain of truth in it. It’s simply another version of Hollywood, where great tales are packaged and sold, where great actors teach people to believe in ephemera.

It’s just that the show in Washington controls the national budget and the national arsenal and affects real people’s real lives.

But, Trump knows that the impeachment inquiry can simply be seen as part of the show, and if he can put on a bigger, better show, he can survive it. Trump is not concerned about truth, protocol, tradition or the sanctity of the Constitution.

Trump cares about Trump. Trump cares about the Trump brand and the Trump show. Trump will reduce this country to rubble before he will submit to correction. And, he’ll portray our destruction as his greatest show.

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Freeze, Ferment And Dry Your Bumper Cabbage Crop

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