The biggest beef I have with the PI rules is that it seems extremely easy to force a PI call on an underthrown ball. Most teams who are trailing late in the game and have a guy who can throw 80+ yards try this trick at least once, where they send a guy on a deep route and purposely underthrow, so the defender can’t help but be in the way. That gets flagged as PI more often than not, and makes a huge difference in outcomes.
Sometimes I wonder if the refs bet on the trailing team to cover the spread.
There have been several Presidential also-rans who made a side career out of their losing campaigns. You need to have some level of accomplishment beforehand, of course, so people recognize your name. (Or, maybe you are just born with a famous one.) Then, you write at least one book. You announce an “exploratory committee”, to test how well you might do in a campaign, which can raise money and fund your travel. Eventually, you formally declare your candidacy, and raise more money.
All your travel is paid for by the campaign, you have paid staff coordinating it all so all you have to do is show up. You eat good meals at fund-raisers where people give you even more money, And - this is the most important part - the campaign buys your books at list price to give away to donors, steering campaign money right into your pocket. By the time you graciously bow out of the campaign, you’ve grifted enough to last until the next campaign starts.
I think the best way to go is probation, enforced with some sort of suspended sentence. If he violates the terms of his probation, the suspended sentence kicks in and he goes straight to Rikers for a few months. It reinforces the point that the crimes may not warrant jail time, but his attitude definitely does. And leaves the whole thing up to his own actions.
And the probation terms will probably not be that onerous. Most probation officers simply make sure their charges are still gainfully employed, and are obeying laws. But Trump is a political candidate and NFT salesman, so we all know he has money coming in. Maybe they ask about his travel plans, which his team can easily give. Maybe they ask him about his medications and make him pee in a cup. Maybe they make him do some community service, which he will spin into campaign stops.
The probation process for Trump will be purely performative, but it is an important performance. It will be all about whether he recognizes that the NYC criminal justice system now has some oversight over him. If he does not, and does not cooperate with his probation officer (who, odds are, has heritage from one of those countries he doesn’t like), he will end up in Rikers, purely due to his ability to not listen to people he doesn’t like.
In fairness, I find the rules for American Football confusing, too, and I’ve been watching all my life. I am still not quite sure what Pass Interference is anymore. My kids are not sports fans at all, and when I explain what is going on it makes it all sound like Calvinball.
Baseball is a bit simpler in that respect. “Tag the guy after you catch the ball” is simple, as is “safe” vs. “out”. We’ll just skip over the infield fly rule, or whatever the hell a balk is. (I admit, one of the things I miss about the Other Place is the liberal application of Jon Bois’ Balk Rules copypasta…)
This T20 form of cricket is shorter, and is not much longer than other US sports. I still don’t get it, though. I work with a bunch of folks from India and they have tried to explain it to me, to no avail.
He’s gotta be the dumbest Senator ever, even dumber than the guy who brought a snowball to the Senate to prove that climate change was a hoax, or the other Senator who said the Internet was a series of tubes.
Doubtful. If he loses this election we’ll suddenly find out that all this vicious slander about him being mentally unsound, incontinent, and syphilitic is actually true, and is justification for him to never see a day in an actual prison, even if he loses all his other cases.
Trump has been saying that Biden is mentally unfit for office for the entire campaign. I always assume that everything Trump says is projection, though, so every time Biden is accused of having dementia by Trump it makes me more certain that Trump has it.
Same way he went around (and still goes around) saying his opponents need to be locked up, yet he is the one with the felony conviction.
Our politics have always had a built-in distrust of authority, ever since we cosplayed as natives to protest taxes by throwing tea into Boston Harbor. We tell ourselves that power comes from the people, and have instituted all sorts of checks on political power, with different branches and levels of government monitoring each other, to ensure that no one is deproved of their voice unjustly. This is why we consider everyone innocent until proven guilty, and we say that even a guilty conviction shouldn’t prevent someone from running for office, because power ultimately comes from the people, not what the courts say.
The problem comes when:
The people are morons who think whatever their screens tell them to think
Those screens get crap pushed to them by algorithms that value engagement over truth
Politicians coordinate across branches and levels of government to evade accountability, rather than hold each other accountable
So now we still think power comes from the people, but the people are outsourcing their beliefs to their devices, which are being filled with crap by algorithms who are convincing us to trust the wrong people.