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Foreign Invaders crisis cost $150B in 2023, forcing some areas to cut police and fire services: report Israel kills head of Hezbollah Intelligence. Status: Not Logged In; Sign In Sports See other Sports Articles Title: Report: Some NFL players may sit out the season unless Kaepernick -- and Eric Reid -- are signed Source: HotAir URL Source: https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05 ... s-kaepernick-eric-reid-signed/ Published: May 28, 2018 Author: Allahpundit Post Date: 2018-05-29 05:14:36 by Tooconservative Keywords: None Views: 11866 Comments: 58 How many activists need to be signed before sufficient wokeness has been achieved to play ball? You can certainly trust hyper-progressive activist Shaun King to give you the straight dope on what star NFL players are and aren’t thinking: BREAKING: Several star @NFL players have told me they are considering sitting out the season until the de facto ban of Eric Reid and Colin Kaepernick is removed and both men are given spots back on rosters. They aim to get 25% of the players to sit out with them. — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) May 27, 2018 Reid was one of the first players to kneel alongside Kaepernick during the national anthem and has since filed his own collusion grievance against the league. He went unsigned in the offseason despite being a top-10 safety by some metrics and after saying that he didn’t plan to kneel during the anthem anymore. Even so, the only team to give him a tryout was the Bengals — and the team’s owner allegedly asked him when they met about whether any anthem protests were in the cards for him this season, which took Reid aback. He went unsigned. As for King, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk asks a good question. If there’s anything to these player boycott threats, we should see evidence of it in pre-season workouts soon, no? If they’re truly considering staying away from training camp and/or the regular season, it will get very expensive. Teams can fine players up to $40,000 per day for skipping camp. In addition to any forfeited game checks, players will be susceptible to an attack on any unearned amounts of signing bonuses they previously have received… Besides, if players truly thinking about sitting out at great expense later, why not sit out at little or no expense now? The Organized Team Activities are voluntary, and more than a few players are skipping them for a variety of reasons. If “several NFL stars” are thinking about sending a message later, why not send a message immediately? Players who sympathize with Kaepernick might feel pressure to take collective action on his behalf if he had no other recourse against the league but the grievance process is in motion and he has a star lawyer in Mark Geragos. He stands a good chance of winning, especially given the political pressure being applied to the NFL by Trump. League owners have been candid about that behind closed doors, in fact: “The problem we have is, we have a president who will use that as fodder to do his mission that I don’t feel is in the best interests of America,” said Kraft, who is a longtime supporter of Mr. Trump’s. “It’s divisive and it’s horrible.” The owners were intent on finding a way to avoid Trump’s continued criticism. The president’s persistent jabs on Twitter had turned many fans against the league. Lurie, who called Trump’s presidency “disastrous,” cautioned against players getting drawn into the president’s tactics… The Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula sounded anguished over the uncertainty of when Trump would take another shot at the league. “All Donald needs to do is to start to do this again,” Pegula said. “We need some kind of immediate plan because of what’s going on in society. All of us now, we need to put a Band-Aid on what’s going on in the country.” I hope King is right, just because I want to see a drama play out in which a quarter of the league suddenly walks out indefinitely over a couple of players going unsigned. Quality of play would decline for awhile as scrubs were sent in to replace the boycotters; some playoff contenders would start slowly because they were missing key players, leading to frustration in the locker room. Owners would panic and want to get Kaepernick and Reid signed asap to end the walkout but that would only make anti-protest fans angrier. Any team that did sign one of them might decide to bench him rather than further inflame the issue by playing him. Some fans who resolved not to follow the NFL anymore in outrage after the initial walkout would grudgingly come back after the player boycotts ended, but how many and how long would it take? Trump would milk the whole thing from start to finish because that’s just who he is — jeering the walkout, jeering the signing of Kaepernick, and possibly egging on a fan boycott over either or both even though the league has bent over backwards so far to appease him. With cord-cutting and disgust at CTE already leading some fans away from the game, being ground between the gears of black activism and Trumpy nationalism might leave the league in a state from which it never completely recovers. As someone who prefers MLB and the NBA, I say let’s get on with it. Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread   Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest #1. To: Tooconservative (#0) Good. If they want to destroy their careers over politics, let them. There are other deserving players out there who will have a chance now because these guys have self-eliminated. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   6:40:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #2. To: Vicomte13, nolu chan (#1) Not to be out-boycotted, the Perpetually Outraged are trying to start a new one. DailyCaller: Keith Ellison Calls For NFL Boycott Over Ban On Anthem Protests I'm trying to imagine who will win the Boycott Bowl. The players? Keith Ellison and Lefty boycotters? Sponsors? Conservative fans? Trump? Silly question really. Trump already set the table to win, no matter what. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   7:08:16 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #3. To: Tooconservative (#2) Funny thing is, all of this is really a bonfire of the vanities as far as I am concerned. I have never been interested in, and never followed, any professional or college sports. With my daughter a world champion fencer, I follow that, but only on account of her. I've always thought of sports as being something utterly unimportant, of no relevance to the real world whatever. It's a time-waster for kids, to keep them outside and active so they don't get fat. The notion that men get paid millions of dollars to throw around a ball strikes me as the very pinnacle of absurdity. It has never offended me, though. People have the right to throw away their money at whatever they please. Where the portcullis of my mind has come slamming down time and again, though, is when public money - tax money - which is to say MY money - even a penny of it - is diverted for the FOR PROFIT activity of professional sports teams. Money is given to build stadiums, all sorts of legal concessions are made to these for-profit industries, and huge numbers of people think there's nothing wrong with that, even though there self-evidently IS something VERY wrong with that. In truth, it is BECAUSE of all of the government subsidies for stadiums, and all of the special laws to give owners monopolies, and all of the kid-gloves treatments of pro-athletes, that I do not even have a tremor of regret when I call for things that other people - those who support all of this government subsidy of professional sports franchises - complain about "socialism". I think: "Go blow it out your ear, you hypocritical doofus!" I think that taking care of the poor and the old and the sick is first priority stuff, and that sports are zero priority stuff, when it comes to government. And yet I get the gun stuck into my face and my tax money confiscated to go build sports stadia for billionaires. THEREFORE, I simply don't care that people don't like being taxed to pay for poverty relief. When the sports franchises are completely stripped of their illegal and immoral monopolies, and every farthing of public tax support, direct and indirect, is stripped from men PLAYING GAMES, pure entertainment, utterly worthless, senseless, of no value whatever - when THAT stops, THEN I'll worry about whether or not we should be feeding the poor and providing pensions to the old, and public schools. UNTIL that stops, then my attitude is fuck all of you, you use my tax dollars to pay for men to wear tights and play ball games, you are GOING TO pay for the poor to eat, or I'm perfectly happy to shoot you dead, you greedy childish piece of shit. That's pretty much where I am on the subject. Tax subsidies for professional sports is all that I need to full justify full blown socialism in everything I care about - sports are SO COMPLETELY USELESS that the fact they receive such huge subsidies cancels out, to me, all of the endless whining and bitching by man-children who love their subsidized sports. Go jerk off in your publicly-financed stadia and pay your taxes so the poor can eat, jerks. So, seeing a bunch of grown men hyperventilate and threaten to...to...to DO something about nothingburgers - which is every single thing that happens at every professional sports event in every stadium, ever, from the dawn of the public subsidy to today...watching them turn red and stamp their little feetsies and be very PUT OUT about nonsense - I can't tell you how smugly superior it makes me feel. Go burn it all down and stay home in a snit. It's all stupid anyway, WHO CARES? I don't. I DO care that my tax dollars subsidize it. I care so much that it justifies the imposition of all of the rest of the "socialism" that I care about. Until that hypocrisy is cleared away, nobody can really say fuck all to me about how they disagree with thus and so. Pay up. I pay for the stadium, you're gonna pay for the poor. That's the way it's gonna be. I guess man-boys have to have their ball games. Then they gotta pay for unemployment insurance and social security. They're obviously not adult enough to make all of the decisions for themselves. They need the government to help them with their playgrounds, after all. Oh, and get off my lawn! (Shakes fist) Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   8:23:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #4. To: Vicomte13 (#3) (Edited) So, seeing a bunch of grown men hyperventilate and threaten to...to...to DO something about nothingburgers - which is every single thing that happens at every professional sports event in every stadium, ever, from the dawn of the public subsidy to today...watching them turn red and stamp their little feetsies and be very PUT OUT about nonsense - I can't tell you how smugly superior it makes me feel. Go burn it all down and stay home in a snit. It's all stupid anyway, WHO CARES? Well, since you're in a killjoy mood, you might like this article where the writer invokes the ancient fathers of the church to condemn pro sports (Chrysostom, Irenaeus, Tatian, Tertullian, etc.). The Federalist: It’s Time To Finally Admit Professional Sports Are Bad For Society, 5/21/18 Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   9:26:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #5. To: Tooconservative (#4) Well, since you're in a killjoy mood, you might like this article where the writer invokes the ancient fathers of the church to condemn pro sports (Chrysostom, Irenaeus, Tatian, Tertullian, etc.). The Federalist: It’s Time To Finally Admit Professional Sports Are Bad For Society, 5/21/18 Professional sports are fine. I disagree with the "ancient Fathers" (often just on principle - the fact that somebody is citing to them as though I am supposed to bow to their superior wisdom - I don't think the ancients were particularly wise). I have nothing against sports, Monopoly, or gardening, or any other way that people decide to while away the time. My beef is with tax subsidies for professional sports. (I don't even have a problem with paying for school and youth sports through tax subsidies: those are HEALTH and EDUCATIONAL issues, not pure entertainment.) And frankly, it is USEFUL that we have these huge tax subsidies and legal exceptions for sports, because it makes it easier for me to justify the tax subsidies for the things I want us to be subsidizing. As long as we're putting money into the pockets of the owners of pro-sports, I will always be able to say: "address THAT before you talk to me about cutting food stamps", etc., and I'll feel fully morally justified...and my interlocutor has to splutter and shuck and jive, because there's really just no excuse. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   9:35:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #6. To: Vicomte13 (#5) My beef is with tax subsidies for professional sports. As was the writer's if you read it all. He liked school sports well enough. And frankly, it is USEFUL that we have these huge tax subsidies and legal exceptions for sports, because it makes it easier for me to justify the tax subsidies for the things I want us to be subsidizing. But isn't that how we get the bloated spending on food stamps combined with unholy farm subsidies? You know it is. Currently, food stamps are a fig leaf, a bone tossed to the poor (many of whom aren't poor at all), to justify the corporate welfare included in all these farm bills. We need to stop making excuses for subsidizing lots of industries and businesses who do not need or warrant government intervention in the market. Pretending that that justifies spending on the poor or that they are somehow linked as legitimate government spending only compounds the problems. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   9:40:03 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #7. To: Tooconservative (#6) But isn't that how we get the bloated spending on food stamps combined with unholy farm subsidies? You know it is. Currently, food stamps are a fig leaf, a bone tossed to the poor (many of whom aren't poor at all), to justify the corporate welfare included in all these farm bills. We need to stop making excuses for subsidizing lots of industries and businesses who do not need or warrant government intervention in the market. Pretending that that justifies spending on the poor or that they are somehow linked as legitimate government spending only compounds the problems. Well, since we're in the business of saying what we "need", let me tell you what we need. Started to write it, went on so long I lost the will to live. Deleted it. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   9:50:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #8. To: Vicomte13 (#7) Started to write it, went on so long I lost the will to live. Deleted it. I'm sure you'll get around to it.     : ) Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   9:52:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #9. To: Tooconservative (#6) But isn't that how we get the bloated spending on food stamps combined with unholy farm subsidies? You know it is. So let's get peace in Korea and in Syria, and then pull out of Asia, Europe and the Middle East, dramatically cut the armed forces and station the rest on the Mexican border. There's your balanced budget right there. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   9:52:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #10. To: Tooconservative (#8) I'm sure you'll get around to it. : ) It's inevitable. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   9:53:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #11. To: Vicomte13 (#9) So let's get peace in Korea and in Syria, and then pull out of Asia, Europe and the Middle East, dramatically cut the armed forces and station the rest on the Mexican border. The Dems and neocon NeverTrumpers would go batshit crazy. LOL Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   10:01:47 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #12. To: Tooconservative (#11) The Dems and neocon NeverTrumpers would go batshit crazy. LOL The Dems would hate the troops on the border. The Never Trumpers would hate Trump making world peace sufficient to do the pullback. The Neocons would hate the pullback from Empire. The Conservatives would hate the dramatic cuts in the military. The Democrats AND Republicans in Congress would hate the loss of pork in their states. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   10:06:08 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #13. To: Vicomte13 (#12) It does sound like a grand old time to me. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   10:07:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #14. To: Tooconservative (#13) And the future would be bright. For a balanced budget means, in time, a declining debt (as it matures and is not replaced), which means less and less money on interest and principal repayment, which means - with constant taxes - a greater and greater surplus, which can pay down the debt faster and faster. Ultimate, with constant taxes, there is a much greater revenue flow because nothing is going to principal and interest. And with a much reduced military, there is an even greater surplus. You take that massive surplus and you pour it into a strong education, adult reeducation, prison rehabilitation and secondary education effort - invest heavily in human capital, and you will end up having less drug use, greater productivity, less crime - and therefore less need of police and prisons...freeing up still MORE money. Get a strong universal health insurance system in place, and you will have completed the circle of needs: Health, education, moderate military, much smaller police footprint, and universal employment. If we're going to pour money into agricultural subsidies (which we will), then pour it into subsidies for ORGANIC agriculture, which does three things at once: employs a lot more low-skilled people (organic farms are smaller operations and is more labor intensive), improves the general health of the people (reducing health care costs), and increases tax revenues. Eventually, with everything fully funded at the right size, you can carefully cut taxes here and there to maintain revenues but leave the most practically possible in civilian hands. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   10:41:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #15. To: Vicomte13 (#14) (Edited) If we're going to pour money into agricultural subsidies (which we will), then pour it into subsidies for ORGANIC agriculture, which does three things at once: employs a lot more low-skilled people (organic farms are smaller operations and is more labor intensive), improves the general health of the people (reducing health care costs), and increases tax revenues. You don't know much about agriculture. Most organic produce is a ruse currently. It's about as genuinely organic as all those diet sodas and low-fat snacks are the easy way to lose weight. Much of this is more about buzzwords and people feeling they're doing something than about actually doing something meaningful. If you did want to subsidize, you would go for the new robotic weeders that spray weeds using about 1/200th the amount of expensive pesticides we currently use. The treehuggers would even support this. And you would subsidize the indoor farming industry. People don't realize just how big that will become for fresh produce in the next few years. The technology really has matured. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   11:05:00 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #16. To: Tooconservative (#15) You don't know much about agriculture. Most organic produce is a ruse currently. I know a great deal more than people who think they know everything give me credit for. I did not say to subsidize "organic" agriculture, I said to subsidize organic agriculture. I spoke of small farms and lots of labor. There's nothing blind and good-heartedly ignorant about what I have suggested in an vector. I assume that people will try to cheat, and that therefore there will always have to be strict oversight. I assume that when oxen are gored, entrenched interests will try to use their political power to change that. Consider what the very major cuts to the military and global pullback I advocate really entails, the number of gored oxen out there and broken ricebowls, and who is going to be angry. Go through systematically who gets angry when you cut traditional ag subsidies, and you don't let organic ag subsidies go to the counterfeits, when you cut defense contracts, when you cut pro-sports subsidies, when you let copyright expire on Disney. You enrage the billionaires, almost all of them, and they come after you with a will. Therefore, to win, you have to give such massive subsidies directly to the people - instead - in the form of schools and medicine and pensions - that you overwhelm the united opposition billionaires with the sheer numbers of the middle and working class. You cannot fix America from what ails it without redistributing substantial wealth and power from the top 10%, and they will always fight you. So you have to go BIG, to make stakeholders out of the huge swath of the middle and bottom, to overwhelm the resistance of the aristocrats by the voting muscle of the mob. But you have to be out to make things better, not just unleash the mob, because the mob won't stop at chastening the rich and redistributing some of their wealth. The mob will go all the way to eating the rich and taking everything, and that fails everywhere it is tried. You have to aim at making things better for the vast majority of people, while still leaving something to aspire to. You do that by vastly strengthening the social services needed by the bottom 80% of society to live decent lives and have a shot at doing really well: schools and medicine, and old-age pensions. You give people security and opportunity. To make that kind of investment, you have to cut something. And the something you cut is the military. EVENTUALLY you want to trim taxes, but only when you've retired the debt. Truth is, the political compromise we've reached is to have ok schools, public backing of college loans, ok pensions, a patchwork of basically workable health care, a huge military, and moderate taxes...which means a massive deficit and accumulating debt. We do everything we really need to do at a mediocre level, the military at a titanic level, avoid substantial wealth redistribution, and simply put it all on credit. Eventually the credit will expand to the point we can't get it anymore, and we'll have a choice to make. The choice we will make is the same one we've made in the past: a debt jubilee that wipes out the lenders. We do it by inflating the currency, which is a much softer way of doing it than defaulting on debt. Unfortunately, the conservatives want to protect the rich too much to actually save the country from the inevitable inflation jubilee, and the democrat/socialists want to make themselves kommissars too much to do anything right. So therefore we keep everybody alive with massive public spending, employed with massive military and police overspending, and the rich happy with subsidies of what they control, and we pay for it all by currency inflation. Given our system, there doesn't seem to be any will to do it any other way, and people do not seem to be rational, reasonable, persuadable or even Christian. So that's what we'll just keep doing. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   11:47:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #17. To: Vicomte13 (#16) You generalized your case to the entire economy. I was talking about agriculture, how to make it more sustainable, more productive, reduce petroleum-intensive and wasteful pesticide use. And increase locally-produced fresh produce indoors on an industrial scale. So I wuz right. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   11:53:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #18. To: Tooconservative (#17) (Edited) I was talking about agriculture, how to make it more sustainable, more productive, If you REALLY want to have sustainable agriculture and truly improve the American standard of living, you put a double-dug French intensive garden in every backyard. A quarter acre produces about enough food for a person for a year, right on the spot, and it's not very labor intensive once it's dug and planted. And for the digging you can have crews - hell, even lawn guys can do that. You subsidize the cost - maybe $1000 per family at the outset, and maybe $500 per year after that. And all of that fallow land produces an astonishing amount of healthy food, taking thousands and thousands of dollars per annum of pressure off of most families, while teaching them something. Take John Jeavons' book "How to Grow More Vegetables", and use it as a blueprint to transform every back yard in America, and you would no longer need agricultural subsidies at all. Of course, no capitalist is going to get rich off that either. In fact, they'll get poorer - fewer needs for all of the accouterments of big ag, or grocery stores, or anything else. People would be healthier too. Everything good flows from this. Too far out of the box, too practical, and not enough big profit and big cash flow in it for there to be a constituency. It'll be my project for when I win the lottery. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   12:08:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #19. To: Vicomte13 (#18) If you REALLY want to have sustainable agriculture and truly improve the American standard of living, you put a double-dug French intensive garden in every backyard. A quarter acre produces about enough food for a person for a year, right on the spot, and it's not very labor intensive once it's dug and planted. And has anyone talked even the French into planting these double-dug French gardens for millions of people? No. You know why? People don't want to grow and can their own food for the most part. They don't enjoy it. They want to go to the roadside produce stand, the farmers market, the grocery store and choose and buy their produce. You can barely get them to actually cook raw food, let alone plant it, grow it, harvest it, can it or freeze it (optionally), and then cook it. To feed a family of six an adequate and varied diet, you need at least half a city block of decent soil. Then you have room for cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, beans, peas, potatoes and a little sweet corn (for a month or so). At least, that is how my mom kept us fed. And so did all the other moms with their gardens. Toss in a hog and a beef steer every year, there's plenty of meat for the family including some for the grandparents. It was a significant investment of time and labor, as you indicated. But where do you find the modern citydwellers who really want to lead that life? I only know a few people in rural areas who still garden and can their own stuff. And they've got plenty of land. They just don't want to. So the way to revolutionize agriculture is to reduce fossil fuel use (tractors, pesticide production) and increase the efficiency of pesticide use from 10-200x. Here is a French company bringing their latest weeder design to market. It cultivates, it doesn't carry any pesticide; it is for high-dollar delicate organic crops. There are a lot of weeding/spraying ag robots coming down the pipeline. There will be a revolution in robotic farming over the next five years. FutureFarming: How robotic weeders are set to revolutionise farming I do like the design of the French weeder, the way it turns. I designed a few robot chassis like that myself years ago. Very clever, solves a lot of robot navigation problems. So it is an obvious solution to a persistent problem in robotics. I did notice that their steering was not subtle and the software is overcorrecting, making the weeder look a little shaky in action by constantly correcting its course. But that is only a minor software problem and may not really affect its utility as a weeder. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   13:12:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #20. To: Tooconservative (#19) (Edited) And has anyone talked even the French into planting these double-dug French gardens for millions of people? I know how to get people to do it. Indeed, you try to get the agricultural community to do anything WITHOUT giving them tax subsidies. (Tax deductibility is a subsidy.) Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   14:02:06 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #21. To: Tooconservative (#19) For your reading pleasure: https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic- gardening/john-jeavons-zmaz80mazraw Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   14:12:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #22. To: Vicomte13 (#21) I'm not sure any book is going to convince today's younger (or older) Americans to put down their smartphones and pick up a garden hoe. Most Americans today would consider it quaint to grow all your own food. It's just not the cultural thing to do any more. Maybe that can change but I doubt it. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   14:33:59 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #23. To: Tooconservative (#22) I'm not sure any book is going to convince today's younger (or older) Americans to put down their smartphones and pick up a garden hoe. Most Americans today would consider it quaint to grow all your own food. It's just not the cultural thing to do any more. Maybe that can change but I doubt it. I'm going to start a separate thread and tell you how I intend to go about doing it. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   14:53:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #24. To: Vicomte13 (#23) I think I'm more interested in robotic ag. And indoor soilless methods in fresh produce factory farming. That is where agriculture is going. Before you write some big thread, just tell me if you've ever grown a serious food garden for a number of years. Americans aren't all that wild about gardening. And the cost of watering would be considerable in some parts of the country. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   15:14:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #25. To: Tooconservative (#2) Several star @NFL players have told me they are considering sitting out the season until the de facto ban of Eric Reid and Colin Kaepernick is removed and both men are given spots back on rosters. Several unnamed star players are considering.... Maybe they will boycott voluntary Official Team Activities (OTAs). They probably told him in a seance. DailyCaller: Keith Ellison Calls For NFL Boycott Over Ban On Anthem Protests I'm all for inviting Keith Ellison to join the boycott. I am all for everyone who wants to disrespect the flag and the anthem joining the boycott. nolu chan  posted on  2018-05-29   17:13:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #26. To: Tooconservative (#24) Before you write some big thread, just tell me if you've ever grown a serious food garden for a number of years. You don't understand. I'm a French viscount, a Dutch royal, and a descendant of Virginia planters. I do not garden, or paint, or turn wrenches. I don't build things. I am not good at manual labor, and I don't like to sweat, unless I am having fun. Sweating while riding a horse is fun. Sweating while working the soil is miserable. Nor do I like to get dirty. Or to kill things, even weeds, by pulling them up. But I do like people, and I understand that they, just like I, need to eat and provide for their families. There are people who garden for a living: they already cut my grass and trim my bushes, and plant the flowers. I show them what I want, I pay them money, and they do it. They feed their family, and I get to sit in my garden and enjoy the trees, the flowers and the nice green lawn. I see what needs lime, what needs fertilizer, what needs trimming, what needs tying, and when I am ready, I call them over and point it all out to them, and they do it, and I pay their foreman. When they are there for a long time, I go buy pizzas and beer and sit with them for a slice and a glass, then I go somewhere else, because nobody really is comfortable sitting to long with the lord of manor, but they do appreciate the pizza and beer - they always eat all of it, and drink all the beer (not enough to slow down the work, mind you, two cans of nice beer, and a nice pizza. My wife speaks Spanish fluently, and Portuguese, so when precise directions need to be given, she gives them. Like Tyrion Lannister in the popular show, I drink and I know things. So I have plotted out the planting in my own back yard. I have a half acre. I would start with the back quarter of it. I will show the plans, get the various seeds, explain what I want, and they will double dig it - I'll be happy to buy them a proper mechanical tool to make it fast and easy. I figure that the seeds will cost me $50, and the labor would probably be 4 hours by four men. Before I do this, I need to have the soil testers come and do the Ph testing at various spots, to find the BEST spot in the yard. Then they come dig it and plant it to my specs, while I supervise. I pay them $1000 bucks and I look after it, making sure that the watering happens. It grows, and when they come to do the yard, I direct them to do whatever. Everything is nice and ordered and well-dug, by expert agricultural hands, following the specifications of the genius who learned all of these techniques and put them into a book, which I have loaded into my brain and then planned out. The garden grows, the 10 overlapping crops come up out of the soil that will bear them, and I have a lot of vegetables to eat and to give to my neighbors. Three of them are Chinese, and they will be jealous and want their OWN gardens...and they use the same groundsmen I already use, because my wife introduced everybody in the neighborhood to our team. So, the same team that already comes and cuts, cleans and tends, will make the additional profit of digging and tending a little more - a little more profit, some fresh vegetables for them to take home - and a structure whereby the rich people of Connecticut, who hanker for "garden vegetables" but have no talent at agriculture, and who don't like to get their hands dirty, have Chico and Carlos put in their garden FOR them, for an utterly reasonable fee, and they start reaping the benefits. Thence to planning and zoning. Once a certain portion of the land is growing various crops, with certain yields, it is "agricultural", and the taxes go WAY down. The farmer's market around the corner, provides a place where the most locally grown of all produce has a market. And all of a sudden fallow land that costs a couple thousand dollars a year to be tended to, pays for itself and then some. There is employment, there are vegetables, there are tax breaks, there is happiness, and everybody gets to feel very superior. Having proven the model, I expand Chico's and Carlos' business, duplicating the model, making many happy. In Bridgeport there's Mission House, where the nuns take care of marginals. There's land. Marginals can do this, earn income and have a purpose. There is unused land and unused labor everywhere, and a hankering to return to the land. There are people who don't want to garden, but who already pay people thousands of dollars to garden FOR them, and who go to the farmer's market and buy "healthy fresh local vegetables". A large number of the Wives of the Connecticut Coast will delight in having their own organic, "French" bio garden, dug by their peons under their watchful eyes, right in their own otherwise unused land. It ends up paying for itself, the people who are good at agriculture already do it, and get paid for it, and the people who already pay them get a huge benefit and get that old feeling back, like when they bought their first Prius. Don't kid yourself that the whole block, street, etc., won't follow suit. Wherever Carlos and Chico touch, these gardens will spring up. The key to the whole thing is to use the knowledge, and then pay people to do the work. Because of the science, the gardens are small and productive. I agree with you that the psychological aspect is the hardest barrier to entry. And believe me, if anybody has a hereditary knowledge of how to run a FIEF, it's me. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   17:14:08 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #27. To: Vicomte13, Liberator (#26) A large number of the Wives of the Connecticut Coast will delight in having their own organic, "French" bio garden, dug by their peons under their watchful eyes, right in their own otherwise unused land. Wow, really roughing it by the Connecticut gentry. Harrowing.     : ) I agree with you that the psychological aspect is the hardest barrier to entry. And believe me, if anybody has a hereditary knowledge of how to run a FIEF, it's me. But will anyone vote for you for king? Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   22:53:25 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #28. To: nolu chan, Vicomte13, Liberator (#25) I'm all for inviting Keith Ellison to join the boycott. I am all for everyone who wants to disrespect the flag and the anthem joining the boycott. We need more boycotts of every kind. I think someone should start a boycott demanding that the entire team, the coaches, the officials, the owners must all kneel for the anthem. Not just take a knee but get down on both knees. And none of this just-one-verse crap either, we want all 4 verses of the anthem played. It only takes about 10 minutes, given how slowly we sing a song that was originally sung about 5 times faster than it is today when they torture the first verse for 5 minutes then skip the other 3 verses. And that's only the beginning. We could demand that they halt the game and play Hail To The Chief or God Save The King at every first down. What pro football needs is some real genuine groveling to the flag while the anthem plays on and jets fly overhead. The crowds would be thrilled. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   23:21:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #29. To: Tooconservative (#27) But will anyone vote for you for king? You don’t vote for kings! Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   23:25:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #30. To: Tooconservative (#28) God Save the King It’s a decent song, but we’ll be singing English words to the Het Wilhelmus to me. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-29   23:28:59 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #31. To: Vicomte13 (#29) You don’t vote for kings! You sound very authentic saying that. Well done. LOL Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-29   23:43:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #32. To: Vicomte13 (#30) Maybe instead of soil farming, you should investigate farming in shipping containers. You can buy these now, ready to go. ModernFarmer: Meet a Baby-Boomer Couple Farming in Shipping Containers GrowTainers is another interesting bunch doing vertical farming in used containers. You could use your peons to run your Growtainers instead of messing up your landscaping design putting in annual food crops. You could even work out a side deal where the peons could get a share of the crops by working your container farms. We could call it...sharecropping. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-30   0:39:44 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #33. To: Tooconservative (#0) And are the team owners going to continue to pay them their big salaries, while they sit at home and watch movies ? I don't think so ! Si vis pacem, para bellum Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. Never Pick A Fight With An Old Man He Will Just Shoot You He Can't Afford To Get Hurt "If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went." (Will Rogers) AMERICA! Designed by geniuses. Now run by idiots. Stoner  posted on  2018-05-30   8:49:51 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #34. To: Tooconservative (#32) You could use your peons to run your Growtainers instead of messing up your landscaping design putting in annual food crops. French gardening can be for flowers too. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-30   9:11:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #35. To: Stoner, redleghunter (#33) And are the team owners going to continue to pay them their big salaries, while they sit at home and watch movies ? I don't think so ! Think of all the time those football players will have to grow vegetables! Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-30   9:12:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #36. To: Vicomte13 (#34) French gardening can be for flowers too. I thought we were talking about small-scale local food production. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-30   9:54:47 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #37. To: Tooconservative (#36) I thought we were talking about small-scale local food production. Intensive gardening can make a plot of land do anything you like. Food is practical, and it works for that. With vision, one can go farther. Truffle fungus infects young oaks. Plant oaks whose roots are infected with the fungus, and the next generation will have tens of thousands of dollars coming out of the ground every year, for no effort other than keeping a trained pig to snuffle them up. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-30   10:21:52 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #38. To: Vicomte13 (#37) (Edited) Truffles are not the answer for the need of industrial-scale locally-produced sustainable fresh produce. And I very much doubt you've followed your own advice by planting truffle-infected oaks in the hopes of harvesting truffles 25-50 years down the road. Maybe you should have just been honest and admitted that you have no real intention of doing any of these things. Until you win the lottery. Tooconservative  posted on  2018-05-30   10:40:31 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #39. To: Tooconservative (#38) Maybe you should have just been honest and admitted that you have no real intention of doing any of these things. Until you win the lottery. That wouldn't be honest. I actually will do all of these things, when I have the bandwidth to supervise it (which is not yet), and when I have completed all of my planning. I am much more interested in finding the sweet spot of perfection in the plan than I am in muddling along with trial and error. Everything has to be meticulously planned out, the ph tests done, the beds drawn, the fence repaired - and also the property surveyed FIRST in a walk through by the wild foods guru. See, there's no point in, say, double digging the ground to plant spinach, when lambsquarters grow naturally all on their own in superabundance all over the same bed. Lambsquarter is nutritionally the equivalent of spinach, and is effectively wild North American spinach, and it WANTS to grow there. Carlos rips it out now, when trimming the verge, but it always grows back. When you have a wild native equivalent of what you're trying to grow, it's just dumb to put in labor to rip up the wild yield to replace it with more- work-required foreign seed. There are several things already there, a great deal of stuff that goes into compost, and that grows of its own accord. Obviously, being able to harvest things with even LESS labor and expense is better, and things that already grow naturally in the soil in abundance are obviously already suited for that soil. So, the FIRST layer is to categorize all of the wild plants on the fief, including the edible fungi. With the list of wild plants and their comparative nutritional analysis, one can get good nutrition with a lack of labor - the labor currently invested in trimming and ripping it back can be halted, and the stuff that is taken for burning, landfill and compost can be harvested for the table. Spinach is much inferior to lambsquarters, because to grow spinach you have to put in a lot of work, a lot of irrigation, and plan to defeat pests, but the lambsquarters grows there full and thick and lush and unifested WITHOUT any labor at all - labor is currently invested in ripping it out. Much more useful to work WITH the land to simply expand the range of the lambsquarter, with really minimal labor and no substantial effort at pest control - and eat that and be just as happy - then to try and manhandle everything and turn it into a copy of a European garden. There are plenty of perfectly edible, nutritious North American plants growing that occupy the same niche, and provide the same, or better, nutrition, than the familiar grocery store Old World staples. So you don't start with Jeavons. You start with the naturalist, and you categorize everything. You run the nutritional analyses. And then you use Jeavons to dramatically boost the native production of stuff that already WANTS to grow there, reducing the required labor, and cost, while equalling or bettering the yield. You then help THAT along with intelligent fauna management, like encouraging a beehive. You get a tap into each of those maples. So once you've planned out Jeavons, you then go a step back, and a step and a step and a half, and you start with what is, and you see if what is, is actually as good as what could be. And if it is, then you decide its better, because you're walking with nature, not fighting it. A lottery win would not give me the means to do this. I already have the means to do all of it. What the lottery would do would be to give me my TIME, right NOW, so that I can focus on bringing into being that which is contemplative. I can't do that at present because of external demands. Americans didn't have to come over here, rip out the lambsquarters, and plant spinach, and fight to keep the spinach alive. Lambsquarters tastes about the same, and doesn't require work. We DID do that, but we don't have to do what was done before just because it was always done that way. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-30   13:53:51 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #40. To: Tooconservative (#38) Maybe you should have just been honest and admitted This tone is why I am not a conservative. Vicomte13  posted on  2018-05-30   14:04:20 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply         .       .       . Comments (41 - 58) not displayed. Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

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