USA News and Poland - part 11

Those "pussies" have a better chance of reaching 90.

Sports are supposed to promote health, not Parkinson's or dementia.

Parents who let their kids abuse their bodies with football are 50 pounds or more too heavy and are simply living out their dreams through the kids.

Cheerleading is almost as bad as football. One bad fall and the girl is in a wheelchair for life. The stats are damning to cheerleading.

There are 10's, 100's of thousands, if not a million guys who played football that haven't suffered neurological damage.

Having said that, I wouldn't want my son to have a career in pro football-not even sure I'd want him to play college ball. The speed and mass of those guys are no joke.

They suffer from less dramatic problems like arthritis and joint pain. Joe Fontana was a cripple at 60.

The worst ofender is pro bodybuilding. These guys die at 40 from enlarged hearts and heart attacks.

I don't have any stats on long-distance runners but I know that things wear out and human body is no exception. Running Marathon is as stupid as climbing Mt. Everest.


I am concerned about my 15-yo gd. She plays volleyball which is better than nothing. The problem with team sports is that you need a team.

After graduation, the team is gone and you have to take up what you can do alone any time you want. This puts gym workouts at the very top.

It's not competitive and much fun but it makes you feel good later when you meet your overweight friends at class reunions.

Same can be said about soccer, baseball, tennis, etc. There's going to be risk.


You mean Joe Montana? His body is beat-up, but I don't think he's crippled.

I think the main thing is length of playing career for most of these guys. Favre played until he was 40, so he played football for probably more than 30 years. 20 of those years in college and pros where the players are significantly larger and faster (across all positions) than in high school and pee-wee; although top-tier high school leagues can produce good sized and fast players--the team one of my brother's played on in the 90's had a starting defensive line that averaged 6'2, 265 pounds--but most leagues are average sized and speed.


Steroids and other substances are deadly.


But, the experience and lessons learned for being a member of a team will remain. Team sports, hell even individual sports, aren't just about physical activity. It's about learning how to compete, sacrifice, develop a work ethic, dependability, resilience, and much more.

You 15 yo granddaughter will benefit from volleyball all throughout her life.

I did boxing for several years in high school. My folks would never let me participate in neighborhood or city tournaments, so it was just constant training for me and sparring. At the time, I was really envious of the guys that entered tournaments.

After a few years I quit (senior year of hs), when I realized that after some sparring sessions I would have annoying headaches and had trouble focusing on the material I was reading. I would have to re-read some paragraphs several times before the information properly sank in.

Since then, I've read that a long sparring session can lead to more blows to the head, than during a regulation bout. I've also since read that any strong punch to the head leads to brain trauma. Several hundred, every week, for years will definitely lead to trauma.

When you're young, and your brain is still forming, it's really stupid to expose it to constant physical trauma.

That being said, I love watching boxing. To me it's one of the most beautiful sports. If one day it gets banned by the woke crowd, I would be very upset. I imagine this is the same way big lovers of football feel.

These guys get paid millions of dollars, to bash each other's brains in. Some other guy works in a coal mine for $50,000 a year and dies a few years after retirement - no one feels sorry for him.

My bad. Of course, Montana...

My best advice to parents who want their boys to become men is synchronized co-ed swimming. They will be very quickly men or gay. Every sport has risks.


Just curious...Hypothetically...

Your 18-yo daughter says: Dad, I need lots of money to go to Harvard. I can flip burgers for 15 an hour or pole dance for ten times that. What should I do?

Watching Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, Boom Boom Mancini was like watching bad mothereffers dancing a graceful dance with one another.

Too bad boxing has become an afterthought to UFC type fighting. To watch the refined skill of an Ali you'd have to pay to see. The UFC see stuff, I saw as a kid looking out my bedroom window at one of the bar parking lots on a random night. Two different levels of fighting.


That seems to me to be the crux of it all: the length of time one gets bell rung.

*nods* THAT!

There is proof that only one of those hard punches, which really throw the head aside and the brain within, could be already enough to end your life miserable and much to early....a huge risk, if you ask me....being called a pussy or not!

...trying kill the other guy or at least give him a near-death experience...

Thanks. No. I have grass to watch.

Few things are more disgusting than women boxing - especially if both are females with breasts.

I guess you pansy's would really shutter at bull riding.
Now there is a real mans sport.

No she is not.
It looks like Teflon Trump is coming on strong.
I just hope he doesn't get assassinated before he gets elected.
Once he gets elected, he will have real Secret Service protecting him and not a bunch of Homeland Security broads like he had during his first assassination attempt.
His first job is to close the border and impeach biden after he charges biden with treason.

I am still waiting for a squad car with two female officers. Never happens.

I guess the guy needs female supervision. Kind of like smart wife - dumb husband TV commercials.

What would you poor guy cops do without females...

CTE is a very real thing. I have had three friends die because of it and the end of their lives was not pretty. I have another close friend who probably has it now, and my wife says I have it. Contact sports of all kinds can lead to this, and most who get it arent making millions. I know guys who have it who never made more than 75K a year in their careers. Memory loss, dimentia, and all kinds of other problems come from repeated brain trauma. I remember getting nearly knocked out from a hit as a kid and being told to take an aspirin and get back out there. Today though, athletes are bigger, faster, stronger, and although equipment is advancing quickly, its never going to be safe.

Meanwhile I saw a real interesting report out of Pennsylvania. The Amish are registering to vote by the thousands. Normally they do not vote. But a democratic initiative is potentially taking away some of their farming colectives. Bucks Country PA, now has a few thousand more republicans registered than democrats. This could be a critical piece of voter turnout. I dont believe Kumala is safely ahead anywhere except NYC and California.

Yes. It's a big risk for rugby players, both amateur and professional.

I see that Liberal New Jersey voted to allow the Muslims call to prayer on loud speakers as early as 6 a.m.
Let us know how you like that waking you up when you are hungover from to much wine, Lyzko.
The border is now at our front doors


You are totally correct PolAm. her campaign is in big trouble.
People are finally waking up that Harris hasn't done anything in four years so what makes you think she is going to do anything different now.
Have you seen a picture of her lately ? She is drained and looks horrible from her campaigning stress while Teflon Trump is fresh and ready to take over as our new president.


Only on t.v. and one of them is always is Black and they are both Kung Fu experts like Dead Man Walking is. lol

Polls very interesting at the moment - Trump certainly got very resilient support but still stuck with my prediction of Kamala winning popular vote by 7m and also electoral college

This one will worry Trump - he is going to need to spend some money to defend a small lead in Florida

newsweek.com/florida-polling-dead-heat-kamala-harris-donald-trump-1958985

...that can beat the crap out of ten 250 pound guy with guns...

Some women are very impressive...

You are missing the most interesting development in the polls over the past week: Virginia is now up for grabs--a state Biden won by 10 percentage points.

When studying American political polls you must be aware that pollsters have a difficult time polling young white males and have no difficulty in polling older women. The significance in that is Trump has substantial support among young white males, while older women are evenly split in who they support. Polling companies have been trying to find ways to get more young white males to respond to their surveys since the polling debacle of 2016 to unknown success.

This election is going to come down to voter turnout--it's going to be all about the ground game.

@AntV
I am seeing more on Pennsylvania Amish, and Pennsylvania in general. Lots of new republican voters registeringing since 2020. Harris cannot win withou Pennsylvania. There is actually video online of Amish wit Trump flags on their buggies. I was dying.

@cms neuf
A poll of 600 people from The Independent Center and the Bullfinch Group that is owned by an insurance company donating to democratic candidates is not exactly a source of reliable information. Elon Musk did a poll too, 75% for Trump. I dont believe that one either.

Ground game = money

Who has more money? Let's see:

1) The Biden-now Harris-campaign committee raised $678.2 million

2) Trump's campaign committee raised $309.2 million

These are total figures recorded for the period between January 2023 and Aug. 31, 2024, the most recent date for which Federal Election Commission filings are available.

Sources: fec.gov/data/committee/C00703975/?cycle=2024

fec.gov/data/committee/C00828541/?cycle=2024

What's missing from these figures, are the amounts of money collected by affiliated Super PACs - there Trump has Harris beat by a wide margin.

Trump has $793M.

Harris has $435M.

Source:
opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs/2024?disp=O&type=S&chart=P

On the balance, it seems to be a wash.

Maybe that's why I have Harris and Trump daily soliciting me for campaign donations in complete violation of American laws.

I should contribute to the Harris campaign, and then go report myself, and her by extension - for collusion with the Kremlin.

Better save your $10 for ice cream.

I do not like sweets.

I prefer bitter things.

Unassailable analysis, although I'd add: efficiency.

Are you spending time, ie money, knocking on the right doors or calling the right voter? It's like when I had a liberal candidate rep and a pro-life PAC rep knocking on my door to encourage me to get out and vote. Pro-lifer was efficient, the liberal dem was inefficient by wasting his time with me.


:D Do it!!! Get all your family and friends back in your former home to contribute as well. Make sure the paper trail is clear and convincing.

Bottom line is this election is very tight. It's a fool's chore to predict the outcome. Although, it feels more 2016 than 2020 to me.


PA is key.


No scat?! That's a trip.

Yes, but as you probably well know - this is a highly developed science now.

I'm sure you've heard of Cambridge Analytica... they are insolvent now (through legal action), but their acolytes have spread out across the world. There are Israeli, Russian, and other companies that will scrape every piece of data on the internet, to tell you exactly who to approach, what the most important issues are for them, what they ate for breakfast, and how they feel about their daughter's new boyfriend.

A strong grassroots campaign is predicated almost entirely on money.

Of course, you could have better vetting and training for the volunteers - producing a higher quality effort overall - but that's marginal. In the end, the quality of volunteers on both the Trump side and the Harris side will tend towards the mean.

What is most important is the maps you give these volunteers (where to go, and who to talk to, and what about). This is data, and data is extremely expensive.

The volunteer per diem, t-shirts, baseball caps, stickers, and other merch cost peanuts compared to what are the costs of high quality data.

It's highly useful, to know that user "AntV" frequently visits Catholic-oriented websites. Compared to other people in his area, he's 1.4X more likely to visit the website of the local diocese. Then, we also see that "AntV" is subscribed to the monthly Heritage or Cato Foundation newsletter. Now this is our man! Send somebody to see him from our pro-life PAC, and make sure he's ready to vote.

@Bobko

Again, an unassailable post.

But, when we're talking about slim margins the quality of the data and training matters to even the smallest degree.

For instance, the liberal dem rep who knocked on my door, would have been better served forgoing my door and hitting a couple places a block away. The door-knocker should have not spent 15-20 minutes talking with me about policy details (details he wasn't ready to engage in), he should've left after a minute. These smallest of details matter when we're talking the smallest of margins.

Poor guy, I feel sorry for him)

I understand what you mean. Some districts get decided by hundreds of votes, so every little bit could potentially make a difference.

America is the world's great laboratory of election engineering. You teach the rest of us, how to build a proper electoral machine.

This is why fellas like Paul Manafort made so much money in Ukraine and Russia - teaching our troglodytes how modern elections are run.

But also in South America, and Africa, and Asia - there are American campaigning specialists teaching the locals the ropes.

In Russia, serious money is spent on elections now as well - and an industry has grown up around it.

Even in a place like Kyrgyzstan, a well-heeled candidate could spend several million dollars on American political consultants.

It goes to show that there's nothing inherently special about the American electorate. If something works on them, it will just as likely work on Malaysians and Tanzanians.

I'm not sure that this style of politics is necessarily a good export - but it is what it is.

Absolutely correct! Human psychology is human psychology.


Nah, it was amiable. It's like when Jehovah's Witnesses knock on my door, I see a potential convert.

Seeing and understanding how the sausage is made - fills one with extreme disgust for the electorate - no?

If they can be gamed like a herd of sheep through various clever methods - what's the point of having a democratic society?

Why spend enormous amounts of money every four years, creating an enormous distraction in the process, if an enlightened autocrat could bring the same results?

Every three years, all of America suspends its breath, and waits to see what the future may bring. The sitting president is then called a lame duck. A lame duck, because everyone largely ignores him - and it becomes impossible to enact meaningful legislative change.

A man like Putin, can plan things over 4-8-12 year horizons - knowing full well he will have the time to finish the tasks he set for himself.

I would answer in the negative.

Because to answer:


I'd argue your POV is a cynical one. I think the more accurate view of how the sausage is made is that these methods are simply trying to articulate the real concerns of the electorate through messaging that will appeal to the electorate to join their side.

It's like Rush Limbaugh and his audience, the Dittoheads. What drew so many to listen to Rush was that he articulated what many people were thinking. He became their public voice. Hence, callers started saying "ditto" when they were on air talking to him.

That's what these methods are trying to capitalize on--making a politician thee representative voice of the majority of the electorate.

The problem, as I see it, is these messages have become demagogued, from democrats saying needed social security reform is to throw grandma out on the street to die or Trump branding illegal immigrants nothing but criminals and psychopaths.

I'd prefer more of a civil discourse and debate over policy than the the demagoguery.

The problem with the enlightened autocrat or benevolent king system is what happens when the autocrat who follows the current autocrat isn't so enlightened or the successor of the current monarch isn't so benevolent? Then you have not an electorate, but subjects who are trapped in a system that renders them voiceless and prisoners to the whims of an individual without recourse to change their conditions.

Representative governments may be messy and imperfect, but, at least, there is hope to change one's predicament. The enlightened autocrat doesn't so much give hope as he can only give odds.

This is known - yes.

I just wanted to see what you think. Thanks)