Finishing Your Career Like John Elway Is Beyond Dreaming

To the credit of Brock Osweiler, the young man has waited a long time to show us the skills that he brings to the table as a quarterback, but in reality this team could just as easily win the Superbowl with Trent Dilfer if it had to.

That is the name that comes to mind whenever you are talking about the "game manager" tag that usually only becomes a key aspect of the conversation when you have the kind of defense to make it part of the conversation.

Like Baltimore did back then, Denver has that defense, and no matter how great the shadow cast by the name Peyton Manning (his game these days is hardly shadow worthy), the biggest shadow of them all is coming from the Denver Broncos defense.

In many ways, it was the shadow of the defensive excellence that has made Peyton's mediocre play so very intolerable.  Now, it will be the thing that demands Osweiler repeat his no turnover Chicago Bears performance against every other team on the schedule and in the playoffs if he hopes to join Trent Dilfer on the list of  game managing, Superbowl champions.

Running the ball is not always about the yards.

To the back handed credit of Brock "The Unknown" Osweiler -and my repeated criticism of Peyton "The Audible King" Manning- sometimes just running the play that the coach called is the best play.

For over a decade now, coaches on teams with experienced quarterbacks have had to decide how much "Peyton Manning" freedom they would give their quarterback to audible in and out of plays as they see fit.  Manning was the blueprint, and in essence, coaches have had to decide whether the offensive coordinator or the quarterback would establish the offensive identity.
                            
In Denver, WE HAVE PEYTON MANNING and the limits on how much Manning gets to effect the play calling began.........never.  Well, it actually did start a little bit last year when our previous Offensive Coordinator (Adam Gase) would yell at Manning for changing out of run plays EVERY time a defense gave a fake look.
                   ______________

What's the biggest difference between a Denver Broncos team with Peyton Manning versus one without him?  PLAY CALLING
                   _______________

This year, Kubiak has played the tug-o-war of play calling with Peyton like John Fox and Adam Gase did because Kubiak is the head coach and the play caller too.  When Manning didn't stop turning the ball over, and just so happened to have enough of an injury to use as his excuse, Kubiak finally benched Manning and took 100% control over play calling.

In other words, the identity and experience of Kubiak as a play calling head coach has never really been seen by this team or this community until the Chicago Bears game.  Actually, even Kubiak was stuck in a post Manning fog until late in the second half when he finally started running the football and playing to the strength of the team- the defense.

He was adamant about that point in his post game speech, and he has actually claimed the necessity of it (ball control and defense) even when he didn't insure the consistency of it under Manning.

This team has had a defense and a running game for four years that deserved an 80% to 20% run to pass balance that Manning just do well.  The biggest difference between our defense in four years is an older Chris Harris Jr. and Aquib Talib versus Dominique Rodgers Cromardie who gave Denver easily as much as Talib has- minus the eye poking.

By maintaining an 80-20 balance from here until the final game, Denver should be the last team standing.  Sure, Kubiak could have vicarious dreans for Brock, the backup who could actually replace the legend and become one himself.  Many times in the past, Kubiak himself was cast in the role of replacement to John Elway during injury, creating similar controversy when Elway wasn't performing up to par. That should be the least of his concerns this time around. (unconfirmed reports from 104.3 The Fan radio show say Elway is actually more in favor of Osweiler than is Kubiak)

Whether Osweiler plays well in a few games and not so well in others, creating a way for Manning's smooth return, or if Osweiler lights up the sky and blocks Manning from an easy return to action, THIS TEAM MUST RUN THE BALL.....PERIOD.

Personally, I would prefer a healthy Manning with 20 years of experience and knowledge to finish out our 80-20 run to victory so long as the men in the locker room agree with me.  Running the ball more consistently would not only make Manning appear to be a better quarterback, it will make him a better quarterback.

If the Denver Broncos are to win in the end, whoever hands the ball off will still only be credited for being the game manager of an all-time great defense.  That won't be great for the Manning legacy, but it will beat the heck out of not winning at all or winning with Osweiler handing it off 80% of the time instead.

Trying to finish your career like Elway did is a fairy tale, and fairy tales only happen once.

Tolerance Was Always Too Low A Standard

We the People, in the hopes of forming a More Perfect Union, have settled for a society of tolerance.

Wasn't it tolerance that created segregation?

What's the problem with tolerance?

Let me provide an example or two.

Did you know that the United Nations believes that we can eliminate AIDS by 2030
(AIDS epidemic can be eradicated by 2030)

AIDS that is, not HIV as a virus can never be truly eradicated.  If the difference between those two confuses you still, it is because we've moved from laughing at the word during my 1987 graduation benediction speech, to now probably knowing someone who lives with or died from AIDS, yet that's about the extent of our progress.

People rarely die from AIDS anymore but millions of US still have no clue about the advances in medicine, or the continuing risks that still exists relative to the disease.  If we understood AIDS and didn't try to tolerate it as only a homosexual or drug addict problem, I would not be still shaking my head 30 years later at the stupidity of such a smart nation.

Several of our presidential candidates are partially victims of this disease of tolerance that has infected us into apathy, while some are using moments of real humanitarian crisis to tap into the unfounded fears of people.  How do I know these are unfounded fears?

Because every migrant who already risked their lives in leaving home would hardly feel slighted by ANY help that America's congress could agree to. Forget Syria for a moment. Any idea of fixing our Mexican immigration issue would be 100% better than nothing at all or dying in the desert.  Yet, a basic agreement driven by human understanding is exactly what got Eric Cantor fired from politics forever.

What exactly did we hope to achieve in becoming a more tolerant nation?  A marriage that looks something like the separate bedroom marriages that used to exist prior to this push to be tolerant?

I wish I didn't have this happy sadness every time thousands of people crowd around Donald Trump to listen to him lie about thousands of New Jersey Muslims having a tailgate style party over the fall of our Twin Towers.

To Trumps credit (and his thousands of followers), a Washington Post article helped to generate the confusion that Trump is capitalizing on now.  The article was wrong, but it wasn't unseemly to capitalize on our misdirected anger back then, and it's obviously not so hard to do now either.

My sadness with all of this comes from all of the living that we've done since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with so little change to show for it.  My happiness comes from the reality that most change begins when the bottom becomes clear.  In my mind, this is exactly what you get when you allow tolerance to be the height of your social pursuit.

Plenty of US have lived with this misconceived notion that WE actually used the tears from watching Martin and Malcolm and those Kennedy brothers die for a more perfect union, to actually become a more perfect union.

Mostly WE pursued tolerance.

Tolerance like they had in seemingly Happy Days or the world of Leave It To Beaver. When folks stayed together forever, but not always in the same bedroom and not with the magnetic passion that created the union, but with the tolerance and acceptance that you  probably won't be too bothered by someone who sleeps in another room.

Tolerance has value- but it doesn't insure understanding.  Respect is cool too, but it wasn't the reason for the orgasmic bliss that built this great family of people United by a common belief and emboldened by an acceptance of the intense necessity of understanding family to perfect the Union and insure the hope for tomorrow.

If WE the People are agreeable to tolerance, WE are essentially retreating to our separate rooms.
If nothing else, Trump is helping us see how very little WE have learned about each other while retreating to our own rooms in this pursuit of tolerance.

Even back in the day, Dad always needed Mom to help adorn the space while Mom probably needed Dad to redecorate from time to time without back pain to follow.  Trump is uncovering our segregated dusty rooms and the damage to our carpets from not redecorating and moving things around a bit.  He's also showing how separate is rarely equal and how ignorance is rarely bliss.

Plenty of Americans can totally relate to every sentiment that is driving the GOP presidential election leader, while plenty of the rest of US who mistakenly believed WE were better than this are witnessing the sad truth.

The Truth Is Never Bad 

Leave It To Beaver didn't prepare us for neighbors like Archie Bunker or George Jefferson, although Archie and George tried like hell to prepare us for today by saying
"Hey!...Like it or  not, this is America too"

Meanwhile, most of us who could, ran to recreate that Leave It To Beaver dream that never was as valuable as it appeared in the first place.  It was fairly tolerant, but segregation will always be tolerant.

Today, WE the People still need integration and understanding to form a more perfect union.  Tolerance has never allowed for too much integration, or the red states and suburbs of America wouldn't be crafted as they are. The word suburb should basically mean "that community where diversity doesn't exist".

Show me a truly integrated community with lots of race mixing and racial understanding and I'll show you an expanding urban trap in which tolerance is still the agenda even if understanding is messing things up a bit and driving the red to be purple or blueish. Everywhere else, tolerance doesn't have to matter as much, and to hell with understanding.

Even WE who claim to be understanding are fooling ourselves a bit and need to recognize what Trump is revealing to us each and every day. WE are all just as confused about each other as ever, and more shocked by our lack of progress than WE should be.

Plenty of nations practice tolerance to some degree or other.  This more perfect union dream demands a new and different understanding.

Call It What You Will. It Ain't Freedom.

France is moving to enact sweeping powers that would allow State of Emergency measures against the potential of terror that looms throughout Europe, but is primarily being forced upon France. Disregard, if you can, that porous borders in Europe make such measures somewhat futile.

Back here in America, 31 Governors of this great nation have decided to publicly announce a block of any Syrian refugee's into their states in the wake of a potential Syrian connection to the ISIS claimed massacre in Paris.

Disregard, if you can, that temporary Visa's are somewhat easy for any European to get when seeking to set foot on American soil.  Forget as well that any state in this union offers instant and unfettered access to every free human being that lives in any other state.  Blocking Syrians from 31 states would only work to keep those 31 states from the potential economic benefit as America vets and scrapes the cream off of the top, taking the best of Syria's migrants. Between this blocking of Syrian's and the decision to block Medicare expansion, GOP governors will soon be notorious for two of the worst economic decisions in the history of state politics.

Let's advance our American imagination right into the realm that France is now,  taking a State of Emergency vote that could soon allow them random search and seizure rights as well as other emergency infringements upon the rights of its citizens.  If what we fear is really worthy of the concern that some have expressed, WE the People should be arming ourselves against this fear just as some American's say WE should.

What will Freedom look like in the future?

Such ideas rose as suggestions again when last our theater's were under arrest and our schools were under attack.  Some American's even think we should place more guns inside of our schools so that kids can make it home safe each day.



Home Of The Free.........Land of The Brave?

We know ourselves to be the brave people of America, the most free land on earth.  Freedom is our namesake.  Our flag stands for Freedom and our way of life is supposed to reflect it.

If our best hope for safety is the hope that WE never have to use the gun that is hiding on our hip, then why carry it?  If you really anticipate having to thwart terror before you finish a lifetime in America, aren't you leaving home with the real acceptance of being the dead victim of terror or worse, a mentally or physically wounded survivor of it?

When the day comes that we choose to arm ourselves just to go to the grocery store- or we plant some pistols in our schools so children can learn without worry of gun play- we can choose to call our way of life anything that sounds reasonable.

Just don't call it freedom. 

Isn't All Terrorism An Attack On Western Freedom?

If what we have happening in our schools, and theaters, during a live remote on the morning news and now Paris is not terror, then I wonder what the survivors who walked away alive call it?

For some reason, we'd prefer to think of middle eastern Jihadists as the only face of terror because its not so glamorous to search for terror's face and keep finding mirrors.

We have known for some time that ISIS has a significant number of European nationals and even a few Americans as well.  The infamous Jihadi John is (or was) a British born terrorist of Kuwaiti ancestry.

France is reporting their recent killers to be of Syrian decent, but the final report is yet to be discovered.  Each of these killers could have migrated to France for the sake of terror, but some of them could have already lived there or born there similar to the Charlie Hebdo killers. Assuming Paris is now the home of home grown Jihadists, American terror too has ample examples of home grown terror that pre-dates today's crisis in Paris or the theater massacre in Aurora.

Apparently, seemingly sane foreign killers causing terror for religion or politics versus our own presumably crazy sons that we keep raising and grooming to kill us one day is some consolation to this nightmare for some.

Personally, I can't see it.

I also can't see how Jeb thinks his brother or any other president has kept us safe with the nightmare of domestic terrorism seemingly a weekly occurrence. Or how "taking it to them" (ISIS) will uncover the places they exists or the places that they can go. Genocide of terror sounds comforting, but no one has figured how to destroy an ideology with weapons of war.

Just because we don't count massacres like the 147 students killed in Kenya or Columbine as terrorism doesn't mean we're right. Al Shabaab, the group who took credit for the Kenya killing, took care to kill only non-Muslims. 

Sometimes terror will be foreign born killers who make their way onto hostile soil in order to do harm to the Western way of life wherever it rests comfortably. Mostly it will be native born citizens with free and unfettered access to kill. 

This is a war against Western comforts and sensibility, and it is being waged on many fronts.  When next it happens in America, we will hope that it is one of our own again instead of the likes of ISIS or some other political terror group.  If it happens abroad they will hope its ISIS instead of the homegrown variety that we prefer over the mere thought of foreign invader terror.

I would simply like to remind those who won't be ducking any bullets soon, that survivors of terror really don't care to qualify their fear of our diminishing freedoms, even as overly anxious news reporters stick a microphone in their face and demand that they do.

MU President Steps Down, Football Team Steps Up

Some call it the Ferguson effect while others thinks its a full fledged revolt from the prisoners.

In this uniquely special scenario, the prisoners are the primary source of revenue for the entire institution, and they are actually in a position to quit work without retribution.

That was the case when 32 of the University of Missouri football team players decided that they had to take a stand relative to the matter of racial inequality on the campus. I mention those 32 because even the head coach and the rest did not get on board until it was clear that they couldn't play without 32 teammates.

Apparently, Mizzou is the type of campus where an occasional poop swastika gets smeared on the walls of the campus as a mean message of hate towards those who walk the campus in Columbia, MO with a little to much melanin.  Hearing shouts of nigger are also a part of campus life.

When such matters were presented as a grievance, now former campus president Tim Wolfe has been quoted as saying that the matter of racial intolerance on campus was mostly a matter of "perspective".  When students attempted to block president Wolfe's car after a homecoming parade in an effort to force him to address their grievances, he did not exit his car and had the students removed by arrest instead.

 News reports seemed to present an unruly student body that could not break the will of Wolfe who steadfastly refused to step down despite repeated requests to do so.

Suddenly, there became a threat of no football.  In the wake of Wolfe's recent relent, we've come to discover that campuses all over the land have feared this day, when football players would recognize the power of their position and make a strong economic play towards change.

In the wake of Wolfe's recent relent, we've also discovered that most campuses consistently keep football players and other big sport athletes free and clear of the general public on campus.  They have a special tunnel to access special meals and special dorms that keep them special and separate from the normal folks on campus.  In effect, they have buffered them from the problems that plague everybody else.

Until now.

Now, the money machine has forced the decision makers to move to keep the money machine up an running.  It would be awesome to imagine that this change was addressed on the merit of moral impact and not economic impact.  In reality, morality did not play a single role at all, at least not as it relates to those who finally fixed this problem.

The Wolfe Is Gone!

In other words, the institutional failures that make MANY college campuses racially unsavory are widespread and still unchanged.  My daughter, who attended school at a nearby school in Missouri, almost dropped out of her really expensive private university as a result of the weight of racial imbalance that she endured for four years of schooling.

The school of Michael Sam, the first openly gay football
player, has now disrupted the national racial Richter scale.
Will other big sports schools follow suit or do major
sports universities move to make the racial fixes first?
Stay tuned. 

On that campus, it was nearly shock causing for anyone to meet my daughter and accept that she was there on an academic scholarship and not to play sports.  By the time she exited her campus and the state of Missouri for the last time, she felt like making a t-shirt with words on both sides of it reading:

"NO!  I do not play on the basketball team.

At that campus, a sports revolt might not have had the same impact because sports are not to the money generators that they are on big time campuses.  At that campus, however, black students have complained like they complain all over the land, even before the shake up at Mizzou.

So, for the mass majority and for a little while longer, nothing is likely to change much at all. Yet, at Mizzou and every school with a similar racial issue, the die has been cast and the blueprint is complete. If you really want to turn things right side up, you might need to turn it upside down and shake a little. If nothing 
happens right away, keep shaking 
until it does.

America Desperately Needs Police To Police Police

Do you remember that time as a kid when adults would encourage you to understand what the American Dream actually means, encourage you to dream and inspire you to chase your dreams.  Before we left elementary school, it seemed everybody  bigger than you wanted to know what you wanted to do with your life and would challenge you with coming up with an actual answer.

I was never that shy kid who froze in the face of adults, but the question always did make you freeze a bit.  In your wildest dreams you had probably dreamed of being a super hero or fireman.  You know?  Someone heroic.

A couple of really smart kiss ups and a few rare exceptions to the rule would actually say they want to be their mom or dad who they saw as a hero.  In reality, the conflict of seeing regular people as heroes and heroines is much of the reason we turned Saturday television into super-hero cartoons and other images for young people to be inspired by.

A couple of courageous dreamers like myself actually had the gumption to say that we would like to be the President of the United States of America- but that answer only lasted for as long as that job remained honorable and respectable and not so regularly criticized by the media that covered them.


Don't you remember when big people asked you what you wanted to do with your life and saying "a police officer" was an admirable answer and an easy way to get big people out of your face?

To dream of being a president is now close to the same category of being a cop in the balance of love versus loathing for each otherwise respectable life endeavor.

I wasn't exactly born back during the "Officer Friendly" era, but I was still influenced by the impact of the message of community policing; or the calming comedy genius of the Andy Griffith Show and how his uniform never made you concerned or angry towards the guy with the gun.

It might just be a part of my imagination sparked by the insistence that we dream so much, but I recall every super hero show starting with the same trumpeting music and a declaration of their mission being something about Truth, Justice and the American way.

I can't even say those words aloud without wanting to poke my chest to the wind and fasten my fists at my waist side.  Policing was the only real equivalent to being a super hero, and smart kids who realized that big people kind of laughed when you said you were going to be Shazaam when you grew up, started using the "I'm going to be a cop" answer as a more respectable default.

Not anymore.

Anymore, someone who tells me they want to be a police officer instantly makes me wonder who they know in their family that inspired such a choice.  Anymore, I want to ask them exactly what they hope to do in policing in the fear that they are joining a job with diminished respect and increased volatility as a result.

Anymore, I wonder how an institution that most regular people depend on in times of trouble, has now become an institution that is universally agreed to be exponentially better than their reputation.

So how do people that are mostly doing the kind of work that everyone needs and very few have the courage to do, become the figures of disdain and disapproval?

That answer is as easy as produce.

One bad squash can ruin the entire batch of .....squashes.

Produce you ask yourself?

Absolutely.  

For as long as we've grown fruits and vegetables for human consumption, we've known that one bad piece of produce can ruin the entire batch.  Although this example is usually described with the use of apples, it is no less true of the rest of the produce department.  If you don't get rid of the bad one's, they will spoil everything else.

Police actually get on television and admit that no organization, including police, can claim to be free of bad apples.  If that is an accepted truth just as we accept that most- maybe 99% of police- are actually good, than why don't we have more situations of those 99% of good cops throwing out the bad apples or admitting when they've found one?

What we do know is that the institution of policing is AUTOMATICALLY predisposed to blacken the life of ANY person that they kill under the natural protocol of PROTECTING THEIR OWN. What we do know is that Corey Jones- the drummer recently killed roadside in Florida by a plain cloths police officer who did not announce himself- had a gun.

I could use this moment to criticize the value of more guns in a nation with less clarity about when they should be deployed, but I will save that for later. Right now I need to know why we know about his gun?  Unless his gun had something to do with his death, its presence should have remained an investigative secret.

It is not a secret, but the police report from the officer who killed Jones is.

How can we really have 99% good police and damn near 0% of whistle blowing from police? What does whistle blowing look like?  A police killing in which we don't already reveal the excuse for the cops behavior before we take a fair and balanced examination into the death and why it happened. Will there ever be cops who do their job exactly the same regardless of who commits a crime?  When that finally happens, it will be the first.

Florida allows George Zimmerman acts.  Is there one person in the world who thinks Corey Jones would not be on trial for murder if he used his Floridian rights to protect himself at that moment and also came out alive?

If police readily admitted the crimes of their brethren,
would we need to pay for chest cams?

Shouldn't the people who are paid to solve crimes finally uncover a few crimes among their own?  Would it not be an element of credibility for cops to expose their bad apples instead of instantly protecting them as a buy product of how they do business, forcing the community to sniff out their malfeasance?

In the spirit of Truth, Justice and the American way, this is wrong.  Until police police police, they will retain the smell of their own produce, for the spirit of truth demands justice be served to corrupt cops as well as those who serve to protect them.

Today's Gun Battle: The Reality Versus The Rhetoric

The reality of guns is simply not matching the rhetoric anymore.

The reality is that responsible users use guns responsibly, but fear ignites gun purchasing for purchasing sake and doesn't insure responsible ownership as an absolute necessity of ownership.

The reality is that gun lovers mostly blame the stupid gun owners and the criminals who use them (for obvious reasons) so as to misdirect the blame that was never pointed at them in the first place.

The reality is that 85% of gun owners actually agree with doing something reasonably different about gun ownership and background checks, but the rhetoric doesn't allow.

The rhetoric says that more guns out there is the best way to deal with the potential danger of the guns we already have out there.

The rhetoric says that only law abiding citizens will follow new restrictive laws and not the criminals.  I shake my head at the very notion of that idea since Webster's dictionary calls a criminal "one who disobeys the laws", which I would assume to include laws regarding gun ownership. By that reasoning, no law applies to the criminal element of society.

Can we at least get most of the criminal guns off of the street with some level of success that reduces street deaths by gunfire?  The Australian plan of offering a "hefty" buy back price to street criminals for those weapons would take some guns off of the street, but the means by which they got there in the first place has to be addressed as well.

Is The Gun Industry Supposed To 
Be Self Sustaining Like Farming?

Weapons in Mexico are almost exclusively created and purchased in the USA, and almost never under legal means.  So unlike weed-  which can be grown almost anywhere in the course of 100 days- weapons don't just grow out of the earth.  They are engineered, serial labeled, packaged and shipped under strict tracking for an end destination that isn't currently tracked very firmly at all.

Way too many liberal gun laws (Texas) allow firearms to be purchased under the darkness of night and lost into the growing world of firearms in America and South America. We know who created them and when, but can't always pinpoint who has them now.  And our laws currently say, that's okay.

If this one broken reality could be the only change that we make, we would have taken a major step forward. Unfortunately, the rhetoric works to maintain laws that say any person who owns a gun should have the right to sale that gun without hoop or hurdle, to whomever and whenever they please....because this is America. Most laws expect the purchaser to register that weapon under their name (like you do with a sale of a car), but nothing insures the step, allowing guns to get lost in the shuffle.

Suddenly, what seems like a reasonable idea gets lost in the swirl of fear and anger laced comebacks that are rooted in things that force you to peel back the onion skin even further to make sense of it all.

If you mention restricting mentally ill from the danger of themselves, the company line against that is a recognition that very few confirmed  (diagnosed) mentally ill folks have committed these crimes and the confirmed crazy but dealing with it folks don't want to be made a target of  our displaced frustration with senseless killings at the hands of just a few of their demented young brethren.

If you then switch the target of the argument onto assault weapons and weapons typically catered for environments of war, the crux of the true debate might finally reach the surface.

Most gun lovers have been convinced by the rhetoric that they need to uphold a Constitutional concern of the government moving to overtake the individual by taking away their guns first.  They are not focused on the reality that an entire block of neighbors who all have multiple AR-15's, wouldn't be able to hold back the military force that exists in today's America versus the single shot musket world that wrote the damn Constitution.

Words (rhetoric) are clearly powerful. Much more powerful than guns, yet they crumble in the face of reality.  Gun lobbyists are keeping their harvest  and production of guns ripe and fervent from season to season with distorted perceptions created by powerful rhetoric of fear.

Most gun owners who come to the end of the line with the reality of the 85% concession on background checks, will reticently draw the line back, but only a little bit with their well trained 'agree to disagree' rhetoric that goes: "if you don't want guns in your home, that's fine....just keep your hands off of mine".

Does that also include your bullets?  In California, a measure is moving forward to require background checks on the actual deadly parts of guns (bullets) instead of fighting the war with gun owners over the encasement of the bullets. California is not only chasing to deal with the access to ammunition, they are doing it using the same ballot initiative approach that brought medical marijuana to California. With technology available to uniquely assign bullets to the owner of a gun (microstamping), limiting access to death pellets is a reasonable next step towards addressing the reality of gun growth, the challenge of tracking gun deaths in America in the ongoing effort to solve crime and reduce gun deaths.

Direct Democracy?

Whilealso admitting to some drawbacks, California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom called laws that permit state ballot initiatives, Direct Democracy.  I personally call it the way in which America stops fearing its own government and finally recognizes our capacity to govern ourselves while modernizing our sacred Constitution for times like these.

Our voice is way too loud in this digital era for Congress to hold the will of the people hostage to the power of  rhetoric, generated by the gun lobby. Yes, over reach is always a risk during government intervention efforts. But not more risky than continuing to insist that doing nothing can possibly make something change.

 

What's Wrong With Peyton Manning? Who Still Cares?

Back in those 'so called' good ole days, when Peyton Manning was lighting up the stat sheets and keeping all of you part time Denver Bronco fans- full time Fantasy Football fanatic- happy and healthy in your league standings, the criticism against Manning was minimal at best.

In fact, I often felt kind of lonely and sort of mean writing posts that declared to hell with Peyton Manning and all of his fancy smancy trick offensive calls.  Sure, it was going to put the defense on the back of their heels, for a little while.  If coached by Bill Belicheck, Manning's mystical offense loses its power and control, looking like the dead run and shoot style from the now defunct USFL.

Yeah, Manning looks like some hot scheme gone cold just like the run and shoot.  He can still exploit the less experienced NFL secondary players, but even they have the film from that Superbowl loss to the Seattle Seahawks, who have functionally written the doctrine on defeating Manning.

Screw you too Brew.

If you chart it, we have basically seen some version of that approach every since that fateful game.  Win or lose, its the better way to go with Manning and the geriatric scoring bares that out.

Was that a dig at Manning's advanced age as an NFL quarterback?

Screw you Peyton Manning.

No, no!  This time its a good screw you Manning versus last years cursing of all that "Omaha, Omaha" crap that hasn't kept Peyton from being one of the NFL's greatest turnover artists and not Manning the Magician that he still thinks he is.

This time I say screw Manning because we truly don't need him to win anymore, giving him the potential to be the most respected game manager in the NFL; which is also an ultimate disrespect to all-time great passers.

Game managers are not respected in a world that finds no fantasy football value in such a thing.  Those of us who recognize the slippery slope of competitive addiction that lies in fantasy football or any one of those Facebook games, can still watch NFL football and our beloved Broncos for the value of the experience.

High scoring starts of previous seasons, that ended with stress and concern about how to close out a tight battle with a worn down defense that has played too many minutes because we show no commitment to run, kinda sucked for me.  Offensive production that amounts to points on the board may seem valuable no matter how you get them, but all points are not created equal.

Time of possession is a point of another sort in the game of football, and tilting the field for a rested defense is not only similar to scoring, that is virtually an Aquib Talib interception away from 6 points in this era of Bronco football.

If Peyton Manning- who used to humbly step to the podium and say he didn't really care how the team accomplished a win back when he was usually the reason for the win- actually doesn't really care how the team wins, it is now time to put up or shut up and follow the diagram for success no matter where it seems to be taking this team.

The last guy to get us over the top (Terrell Davis not John Elway), seems to think the same kind of stuff that I feel regarding what we are seeing out on the field.

According to Davis, "I see things a little different than some. I see a team that can get in an ugly brawl and win".

Why does it matter that Terrell agrees with me?  It doesn't.  It only matters that he is agreeing with me while using those recognizable terms that only come to bare in the championship moments of sports.

Inevitably, every sporting event- that doesn't involve the massacre of one team over another- gets compared to THE ultimate sporting event, the one in which your arse is truly on the line.

Boxing comparisons are supremely cliche but represent the only vernacular we have when sports ascend into the realm of war.  MMA doesn't quite translate the same and Bruce Lee is that hero we don't even dream of being like, so we dare not compare his one finger punch to anything that happens on a field or court. But, boxing?  Everyone can relate to a good fist fight and might have even dreamed of what it feels like to win one.

Superbowl legend from the Dallas Cowboys Michael Irving, stated it in an interesting way.  He said (I will paraphrase) if you want to hurt a team you attack them at their weakness.  If you want to utterly destroy them you attack them at their strength.

No matter what teams are doing to take attack the strength of Manning's offensive exploits when firing on all cylinders, nothing they do to Manning can disrupt the undisputed strength of this team- its defense.

I called this defense special even before Manning started playing poorly enough to bare that witness as well.  Only real, Orange Crush-like Bronco fans who actually care about defense, recognized the constant call to action that the defense had to answer in previous seasons, carrying Manning through what has become increasing moments of predictability.

Manning will never be the best player on this team for as long as he remains on this team.  Manning is still in the top ten list of best players on the Denver Broncos team, and Brock Osweiler is not even in the top 20 or 25 considering players who recently stepped up and impressed in the absence of injured starters.

If all you really have left in Peyton Manning is someone who can be the consummate game manager for a team that probably needs one more than any team has needed one in recent years, then this Denver Bronco team just found its QB for this year and the next.

What's Different With Denver's Defense?

Manning can reduce the mental error and turnovers, and needs to do it for the sake of his career and legacy.  How he closes the book on his career is soon to be determined.  Will he get a title and ride out like Elway did?  Can this team actually get better with rookie Shane Ray or old man Demarcus Ware out of the lineup?

Speaking of what do you see, despite injuries of their own, this Bronco fan sees a team that has played well on defense for the past two seasons culminating in this breakout year in which our number one acquisition in the off-season was not any one player, but one very special coach.

Wade Phillips is the only real difference between the defense we now laud and the under schemed, over utilized defense who are essentially the exact same players as before. Between Phillips and a stellar special teams unit, the Broncos are as good as every other undefeated team out there, who all have some areas of needed improvement despite their spotless records.  Fix our capable but sputtering offense and the Broncos would clearly be the best team in a league unsure who the best team actually is.

When things get tight, hold strong Bronco Fans.

This defense and its new coordinator deserve exactly what they are getting right now- the culmination of several years of good work gone mostly unnoticed. They are a marriage made in football heaven, and the reason why I would take these Broncos, including our more than capable QB Peyton Manning, into battle against any team with the absolute confidence that we can win.

None of my old screw you Manning posts had any confidence that we could actually win without Manning performing at least marginally well. Now I really really mean it.

Socialism Unleashed Like Rap Music 40 Years Ago

It would be terribly easy to write about every moment that Donald Trump attempts to keep the limelight upon himself, but that would require an article per day- and two on Friday.

After the first Democrat debate, what we have clearly discovered is that #BlackLivesMatter and Donald Trump is actually worth the circus he creates simply because everybody loves a circus.

Entertainment was primarily low last night, except for those moments when that boisterous, white-haired college professor looking dude boisterously said something that many of us wish we could have said.

Like, enough with the email issue already.

Bernie may or may not already see this, but if this Hillary Clinton email matter has real legs, the press would let it walk on its own and stop giving Clinton the extra shine that she really doesn't need or want, although I am personally convinced that the email mess will eventually be the rough road she travels to prove she can handle the presidency.

In reality, Hillary is just as eager to clear her name before the Benghazi committee and the world as they are to try and ruin her name some more if they can. After last night,Trey Gowdy and the Benghazi committee should reconsider their political tactic against Clinton. I would not be looking forward to giving her a microphone and the chance to look presidential because we are all clearly recognizing that it won't be easy to make Hillary sweat even with a proceeding created solely for that purpose.

News Is That Collection Of BAD Things That Happened While We Slept.

Obama's hair isn't white for nothing.  The first demand of the presidency begins with the pressure from the press to make you into the news they seek.  News reporters quickly forget that they are moderators and can easily begin conducting an interview right in the middle of a presidential candidates answer (even before they've gone over their time limit Anderson Cooper).

Pundits must consider themselves somewhat smarter than the people they cover or they would not condescend when describing politicians and the ideas to which they subscribe.  The press is clearly more informed simply as a function of the job description. But true smarts could come off as stupidity and still dominate the GOP primary race.

Trump (and no other GOP candidate) lofted the first grenade upon the #DemDebate  last night by announcing his upcoming hosting of Saturday Night Live and his plan to live tweet side by side with the debating Dem's.  Unless you didn't already know that Americans vote in dismal numbers and must vote in mass to complete that populist revolt, there really was no significant discoveries from this debate until Bernie Sanders asked US to stop bombarding the electorate with constant coverage of those "damn emails".

That sounded like a political calculation error from Sanders, but in fact, Sanders is the person who will most benefit from an opportunity to advance the campaign conversation down the road towards real solutions and not trapped underneath the umbrella of trickle downs promised prosperity; handcuffed by politicians who want to lead simply for the sake of winning, or those damn emails.

There are no winners with the kind of congressional gridlock that would rather conduct repeated political witch hunts instead of  displaying the courage to fight a legislative battle in today's blood thirsty, polarized congress.  Even our president can only nip at the edges of possibility with the use of executive orders that set federal directives but have little power over truly fixing these Divided States of America.

Aside from hearing Socialism's music played before the masses, the debate was somewhat dull for us Socialist' who already know the Democrat party line and expected this eventual espousal of Socialism evidenced by the predictable rise of the boisterous proletariat's that Sanders roused up in Las Vegas, Nevada last night. Las Vegas happens to be one of the last strongholds of labor unions, so a crowd that Bernie Sanders had eating from his palms came out in full force to infuse the audience with hoots and hollers for populism.

The struggle I have now is the same one I had at an early age of employment.

How Do You Find A Healthy Relationship Between Capitalism and Socialism when one is always seeking the death of the other?

Maybe I started working way too early as a kid.  When you are a leader by nature, every job you do will call you into leadership.  Such was the case for my early working years in which I was quickly drawn by the money and mindset of management versus the poverty and limited perspective of the general worker.

Even my paper route forced me to learn the entrepreneurial reality of supply and demand, managing expenses and yielding a profit that you fully keep for yourself or use to upgrade to a banana seat, Bronco orange, Schwinn 5 speed bicycle that allowed me to expedite delivery and grow the business.

The view from above showed me that a little brother who actually worked for junk food and snacks adds a particularly alluring means of making more money and minimizing paper cuts from folding too many papers too fast.  It also showed me how difficult things get when Wednesday or Sunday circulars came out and I had more newspaper than I could carry on a Schwinn; or my little brother became too lazy to wake up during those ungodly hours of morning newspaper delivery; or it gets tough to make it to middle school on time when the news is running late; or you, the sole proprietor, are feeling just as lazy as that helper of yours who no longer appreciates junk food for payment.

One day you finally do the math and realize that you are working really hard for very little profit, and you start to wonder what the big boys at the top would do if you didn't deliver your 120 newspapers every morning? How would they make all of their millions without you and those of your kind?

Newspapers remain around mostly because of the generations that still enjoy them, not because delivering them is a good gig.  I appreciate print publications and even dreamed of starting one of my own back when I was young and didn't see the coming of the Internet.  Now, newspapers embody the stark separation of the generations.  The very future of print media, even Playboy, seems tied to our parents and them- the precious few Americans that were raised to want to read and prefer not to scroll.

I love the music of my parents and them. Yet, it is not exactly the same as the music of my own childhood, and I can't help but notice that, unlike the music of our parents, the music of my youth continues to play on my children's playlist. The youth of today and their parents are the first generations in modern history that hear and enjoy the same kind of music. We never listened to our kids music and ask the question of "what is that", even though we scream at them to turn "that" down, mostly because we think our version of "that" is superior to this new stuff anyway. While that might seem like a simple coincidental observation, it actually might carry a deeper meaning when the protest music from 40 years ago has yet to stop talking.

Rap music started this revolution first for young black people.  FOR ME! Though me and rap are not as young as we once remembered, our voices of revolt are still resounding.

Starting with the youth of the late 70's and early 80's, Black America's rap music has inundated the voice of all of the youth so completely that the message oozed outward and is now speaking through every mouthpiece imaginable.

Plenty of sensitive and caring whites and older Americans saw value and purpose in electing Barack Obama as our first black president, but they all would have failed if not for the power of the minority and youth turnout; the same group of voters that are forcing us to Feel The Bern as we speak.   For the revolution that Sanders seeks to take soil, these voters must place boots to the ground and achieve an Obama like turnout and beyond.

Some of that young crowd includes the Black Lives Matter movement and those that they have PROVEN to inspire.  #BlackLivesMatter crusaders are those same hip-hop loving kids of ours who grew up on our subliminal message of social liberty layered with a heavy bass beat or a beat boxer spitting into his hand when no better accompaniment could be found.

 It was a message that nothing and no one could stop us from busting a rhyme making a social revolution happen, or silence the message once it began; a message of rising above the efforts that seemed systematically contrived against you. Even the efforts to denigrate black street music culture only further exposed it and expanded it.  Much of that same dynamic can also be applied to the journey of populism.

It is a message that even has republicans talking wage equality. They might be trying to add more of that comfortable banjo background, trickle down tax cut measure talk, but they hear the music that is making everyone bob their heads up and down with that stink face you get from a funky rhythm- and in your face rhyming  rhetoric to go with 'em.  Like a hard hitting lyric from Public Enemy or KRS-One, even the old folks who hoped to conserve their traditional forms of music, had to stop and listen at least to discover what was objectionable.

 If you tryna say you want a revolution?
Mandate voting in the f- -kin' Constitution.

One way or another, the beat and the message kept playing, and it won't be stopped even if Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift collaborations have to keep the message and the music alive.

Before long, even country music lovers, inside the reddest of Red States, have had to endure rap's social invasion simply because the youth heard it and couldn't ignore the music or the movement.

Because America is far from the day that 80%  participate in an election (54.9 percent turned out in 2012), Bernie Sanders can't get elected as America's next president. But he showed up, took a seat in a place without welcome, and turned up the sound of Socialism last night. 

Capitalism must now do its best to insure that most won't remember the hook from his song or the moves in his dance. But you can best believe that the beat will stay in their heads forever.

What Does No TPP For HRC Really Mean? Biden's Out, Bernie's A Problem- things we mostly knew

What does it mean that Hillary Clinton doesn't support the TPP deal.

Mostly nothing.

But actually, it is not only the clearest signal to me that Joe Biden is not running for president, it also says that Hillary knows it.

With Obama and Republicans already being odd bed fellows on the TPP, what good does  climbing in  to endorse or opening your mouth to oppose, do for Clinton's campaign?

The answer is mostly nothing.

Those who support Clinton will likely do so whether she was in or out on the TPP.  Those who oppose her but would vote for her over the GOP options are likely those thousands of folks flooding in to see Bernie Sanders speak, a flood unlike any other candidate is experiencing including Donald Trump who does  at least draw enough folks to make the room look full.

During Bernie's events, his mass appeal has forced his curious onlookers and ardent supporters into outdoor overflow areas with widescreen television views while raising millions on nickel and dime donations from the same eager masses.

Hillary got killed for having one particularly empty roomed event, and Jeb Bush has resorted to the quiet room where his big giant 'Jeb! 2016' campaign board fills half of it. Granted, neither of these known entities actually need the extra name recognition, but neither does Trump.

Trump is slowly losing his campaign crowd panache, and is quick to categorize his crowds alongside Sanders who is clearly the current crowned king of turnout.

Feel The Bern Now?

Hillary can't run from her plummeting poll numbers nor can she deny who and what is causing all of this. Bernie Sanders is doing what even I, a proud Socialist, doubted he could do; owning those fictional independent voters, that wide swath of the electorate that votes rather predictably even if they hate party affiliation.

What Sanders must also do is attract just enough right leaning independents to make his candidacy possible, pulling out the volume of commoners that it will take to give Hillary another horrific primary failure.

Conventional wisdom says that Hillary is feeling her own burning desire to overcome the mistakes that caused her to come up short the last time around.  That same conventional wisdom chimed in on the rise of Trump and has been wrong every time.  In other words, nothing feels conventional this time around, especially the Bern.

If Trump keeps it up, Bernie and Hillary might actually have hope with the massively growing Libertarian wing of the GOP, which is the new vocal minority.  Libertarians are not beholden to the religious aspects of the GOP agenda favoring a self reliance mentality that finds them typically skeptical of everything including two party politics. .

In this area of interest, Libertarian skepticism finds itself allied with the Progressive skepticism like that of Sanders or Senator Elizabeth Warren, the leaders of modern populism.  Neither Sanders or Warren are down for the TPP, but their opposition of it isn't any more significant to the losing side than is Hillary Clinton now that she has joined them there.

Not being for the TPP will eventually look a lot like not being for the Iran deal. Capitalism has expanded thoroughly enough for other nations to recognize the importance of cooperation and regulations to protect public health and insure corporate profits, and Iran has long since been a nation that opposes the old war mentalities that foster nuclear proliferation, seeing nukes as an antiquated weapon.

Hillary can't deny her plummeting poll numbers nor can she deny who and what is causing all of this. Bernie Sanders is doing what even I, a proud Socialist, doubted he could do; owning the fictional independent voters, that wide swath of the electorate that votes rather predictably even if they hate party affiliation.

"I oppose this deal"
for whatever that's worth.

In the end, the world will look at those who oppose the TPP and say, sorry that you did not appreciate capitalism's enemies finding reasons to wave the white flag of cooperation that promises profits for all.

Capitalism is nothing if not pragmatic, and our feeble attempts to insure democracy in our own homeland (without the Voters Rights Act?), while also trying to spread it abroad have fallen woefully short of reaching the mass epidemic that capitalism has.

We've developed into a generation of Americans who think that the Made In America label still matters more than Show Me The Money.  If corporations can find cheaper means of production, they find greater hope of longevity in a competitive world where cheap labor won't suddenly die and go away just because a few Americans insist on trying to outwork third world countries.

Change The Model?

We will always be in competition for the leanest means of production/profit because companies that survive also maintain consistent profit/production.  High priced workers have to double production amounts just to achieve profit/production to the capacity of those who earn less than half of what you do, thus WE (American workers) disrupt the only model for measuring the success of capitalism that we know- profit and loss. Unless we change the model, we all remain  enslaved to its design.

Our current model demands that WE expand our reach, and that we do so while protecting corporate profits a bit better than we are doing right now.  For the most part, the TPP will do just that, working to improve copyright protections and product ownership rights that are basically ignored or non-existent in competing economies. U.S. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, are the sole profiteers of a new drug  for 12 years before the market can compete by creating generics that are cheaper.

If an approved drug is seen as being beneficial to the world, not a lot of good things come from a 12 year corporate monopoly on that drug except price gouging and profit stashing.

12 years is a timeline that even the Obama administration thinks is too long, so the TPP negotiations are intended to move it closer to the 5-8 year range that is more common to international standards. Although the pharmaceutical industry wanted stronger protections than this, any negotiated compromise will help drug companies who currently see generic versions of their drugs hitting foreign markets within a year or less of their release in the U.S.

To stand in opposition of the purpose of the TPP, or the Iran Deal for that matter, is essentially immaterial because it comes down to whether or not the countries involved in the negotiations will commit to being more fair and more accessible as a result as these signed negotiations insist they all will do.

If the assumption of fairer trade practices is also connected with a promise of expanded access to corporate opportunities in each market, this is a win win that is larger and more significant than the ink that created it.  Both of these deals amount to a promise to work together for the benefit of all involved, including the ability to respond if commitments aren't met.

Whether expanded access to American capitalism eventually leads to corporate outsourcing of production is a foregone conclusion since corporations have long since acted to insure the growth of production/profit, and very little will ever change that capitalistic reality.

With or without the TPP, large corporations search for global trends and respond, or they are swallowed whole by the leaders of the trends. Don't be surprised at how quickly Iran is involved in certain aspects of TPP commerce.

Hillary knows all of this because her husband authored that last trade deal (NAFTA) which expanded the trend of global expansion and outsourcing, causing US to not want another magic trade deal, no matter what it is supposedly intended to magically achieve.

So why did Clinton bother coming out either way?

Standing against the TPP is Clinton's best hope of minimizing the impact of Bernie Sanders.

Period! (with an exclamation point)

As I mentioned before, it is also the first sure sign that Biden is likely a spectator for the 2016 race.  Hillary is in no position to want or need to show her hand on this deal and risk losing an Obama endorsement that will likely be the only reason she wins.  But she's doing it anyway.

Satisfying a voracious press core didn't force Hillary's hand before the polls aided them, and the polls say that Clinton's numbers and her pathway to the victory are being impacted by the segment of swing voters (that Bernie is owning) who she will ultimately need regardless of the eventual GOP nominee since most of the GOP front runners are in favor of the TPP, further alienating yet another segment of their potential voters.

Hillary's hope, and every presidential candidates hope for the foreseeable future, hangs on that sacred swing voter. Clinton is positioning herself for those who won't have Bernie as their final choice (unless he goes 3rd party), can't imagine standing behind Trump as the GOP nominee,  and want a candidate that hasn't agreed to any "trade deals", a populist pseudonym for shipping more American jobs overseas.

Enter Hillary Clinton who would denounce TPP, NAFTA and Bill Clinton too if it helps her win the White House. "As of today I am not in favor of what I have learned about it" said Clinton (CNN).

Translation: This Bernie Sanders thing is serious and there are already way too many strange bedfellows for the TPP as it is.

Unlike Donald Trump, who can't win and can only lead the conversation into directions most of us wish it wouldn't go,
Bernie Sanders can't win either, but has changed the conversation.  
Maybe for good.

Pattern Is Pointing Out America's Terror Problem

Sometimes in the quest for agreement, you have to recognize when your opposition has moved an inch back.

Such is the case for this horrific crisis that way too often ends in an argument over what is the right way to go about dealing with terror.  Some will tell you that we should be ready to shoot back instead of being at the total mercy of a deranged shooter, while others have concluded that nothing, and they repeat, nothing can be done about the issue of lunatics who kill people in mass.

So let me ask the question in another fashion to see if I am clear.  You mean there is nothing that we can do to stop these things, or there is nothing that we should do?  I'm not sure if we want to make Tim McVeigh the father of American terrorism or if we would share that crown between Dylann Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine killers.  What I do know is that the model is not incredibly new, nor is the problem.

Since we really didn't start to address the potential for these crimes until Columbine happened, I will give Klebold and Harris the nod. Since back when they disrupted the conscience of the state I was born and love, to date, the states that have passed comprehensive gun legislation have also benefited from the compromise. Thanks to the vast number of states that have refrained from change, America remains the most violent civilized nation on the planet.    

4.4% of the people on this planet live in the United States along with 42% of the worlds guns.  People occasionally buy guns for the sport of killing animals or for the memorabilia value that old guns often bring, however, those gun user's don't make up the bulk of that 42% of guns in America.  Hunting for sport can be very expensive if you aren't also a fairly good butcher who can process a carcass down to its functionally edible parts and not too many Americans can afford to make up that 42% of guns in America.

Those who hunt for sport typically find a couple of really good killing guns and they keep them until they upgrade to something better.  Unless you are an wealthy, avid collector of guns, there is no sense having 14 different "very expensive" animal killing guns with no way to carry or shoot them all unless you hunt so many variety of wild animals that you are probably some rich dentist who killed Cecil the Lion.

Stock piling weapons for that eventual day of doom that seems destined in a world so full of guns is somewhat normal behavior in America, yet few of my social media gun nuts share pictures of 14 guns. Doesn't this form of gun stock piling point to the mind of a person who is not intent on sport hunting, but on someone preparing to kill before they are killed themselves.

The point is, guns are made for killing.  Killing gang rivals- as so many black and brown boys do to each other during their violent 20's-  or for killing arrested gang members who get out of line, as well as an occasional innocent person who just so happens to resemble a gang member or God forbid, runs away from police.

Guns are also for killing combatants on the battlefield or innocent students and teachers in a classroom, and maybe even for killing yourself when times get tough or your killing spree at a school gets halted by law enforcement.

Gun free zones were familiar and expected follow ups to the drug free zones that schools adopted to add strong punishments for average Dick and Jane's that would dare think of threatening the health and safety of an area in which our school kids go to be safe and to learn.

Come to think of it, how come we never have had a female lunatic shoot up places that make us feel afraid and vulnerable?  We also rarely have adults over 30 years of age that go into psychotic rages of terror.  We have had a couple of teenage killers, but teens don't have easy access to the kind of weapons that killers typically need for these kind of rampages.

Minus a couple of exceptions to this rule, mostly we are dealing with twenty-something white young men with a love for guns and a mentally disturbed level of hate for society.  Even Black Lives Matters isn't fighting to resolve that black on black crime issue, so neither will I other than to say that their skin color doesn't invalidate the other aspects of this murderous pattern. Most of our killers are twenty something men.

We know that most of these young men acquired their weapons legally and lawfully, which is no solace to the families that lose loved ones.  It's not even sufficient enough for Ian Mercer the father of the Umpqua Community College killer.  Mercer was shocked and confused at how his son could get so many guns without impediment or red flag.

Determined to comfort the pain of all the victims, including himself, Ian Mercer has bonded his energy with that of Andy Parker the father of slain television journalist Alison Parker, who, alongside other gun restriction advocates, refuse to stop until something finally gives on this issue.

And as I mentioned in the lead, something finally gave a little. The opposition hasn't backed all of the way up, but they moved an inch- which is all that was needed for the clarifying questions to begin.

I will repeat.  

Saying that there is nothing we CAN do doesn't actually go to the extreme that Jeb Bush went when he said that there is nothing we SHOULD do about this, insinuating that doing something could make for more problems.

If you are among the Jeb crowd that says doing something will make things worse, then I won't try hard to persuade you of anything since you will probably be working hard to insure that nothing does get done, and your gun stays at your hip and not just hidden in your sock, back or glove box.

Those of you who've backed up an inch from Jeb and them, but still believe strongly that we SHOULD do nothing, are now more apt to say, there's nothing we CAN do to fix this problem, basically conceding that you are not personally hopeful for the potential of mankind to address its issues, or to collectively work together- or both.

Ye who are downtrodden, despondent and doubtful that anything CAN be done about this- even though statistics in other civilized countries contradicts this point- have taken a posture that demands I ask the really important question that I've been leading up to all along, and here it goes.

If you simply don't believe anything CAN be done, can you get the heck out of the way and allow the rest of us to deliberate and decide on a direction of hope that doesn't include sending our kids off to school complete with directions on how to play dead or pull off a head shot (domestic terrorist wear body armor) in the event of a mass shooting?

Stuff does happen Jeb, but when that stuff disrupts the sanctity of our schools and the kids that fill them, stuff grows to become more than just stuff.  This is a nasty case of  mold which grows like all mold- whenever and wherever there is darkness. Teaching our teachers and students to pull off a head shot under stress alongside Common Core math (I repeat, domestic terrorist wear body armor) is not exactly shining a light.

Do we only hear our athletes when they are explaining away
a crime or a misdeed?  Our answer is not as far as it seems.

Even the smallest bit of light that we occasionally shine on this thing has all but isolated 20 something white males into a corner that finds them  uncomfortable and highly agitated as a particular subset of American society. Whether angry white men who don't believe in mental health assistance are breeding angry white boys who kill us is somewhat of a simplistic question. But maybe the answer to most thing sits so simply close to our faces that WE often miss it.

http://thebrandonmarshall.com/landscape.html

The problem with Women's Liberation is women didn't have the problem in the first place.

Maybe the real need for the Women's Movement was the presence of mentally ill macho men who should have been a key part of the focus of women's equality all along?

Men don't talk about mental illness and are not naturally pre-disposed to share their pain  and weakness.  The unfortunate aspect of any person who lives too long without being able to properly vent themselves is that they are always on the edge of screaming out loud, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere.

Some men scream through misogyny or date rape drugs even though you are Bill Cosby and shouldn't need drugs to get sex, while others play video games and troll people a lot.

These murderous acts of terror are a different kind of scream from young men in pain, yet we keep hearing them yell through the mouths of the other victims that they include in their deadly acts.

The killers, like it or not, are our kids too, and thus our problem too.  Much like the Women's Movement might have created more angry women than it did sensitive men, there is a potential to do too much of what feels like the right thing and not exactly fix the problem.

Sure we can address the data that says 4.4% of the world should never possess close to half of the world's guns. But at the end of the day, if we spend more time on the guns that need people to make, want and use them instead of the broken people who keep wanting and eventually using guns, then the gun folks will win an argument that they won't even be a part of anymore (since I just dismissed them all), as more deranged, 20 something, probably white boys, kill a bunch of people with a few bombs (no guns) in the middle of a marathon in Boston.

Too late?

Sounds like the gun people already get to say they told US so.




 

Broncos Building A Championship Or Bust Foundation

To run or not to run.

That is the question that has betwixt'ed the Broncos for the past few season, maybe for as long as Peyton has been at the helm.

Years of Manning's marvels have littered the league and the record books with evidence of a quarterback who knows how to unravel a defense,  and an equal amount of evidence of how he did it as well.  When the method didn't change, the evidence of how began to mount in favor of the defense; nothing more telling and tolling than the empty backfield and the declaration of hope that it gave hopeless defenses who used to face off against Manning without a clue of what he'd do next.

Nobody conquered Manning.  They all survived and  a few overcame him in the end.  An army can win battle after battle, but will only be remembered when they storm the hill and overtake the castle.  Those great teams from Minnesota and Buffalo that nearly won four titles, but failed on them all, are historical blurs for a select few fans who lived to watch it happen. For a few years after they finished, we actually showed a great deal of respect to Minnesota's QB, Fran Tarkenton or Buffalo's Jim Kelly.

Modern fans don't get reminded at all about teams and players that did a lot of good stuff, but couldn't get it done.

Dan Marino could be in the GOAT (greatest of all time) debate.  But he didn't win.  As a result, only those who watch him on his Sunday football show even know his name anymore.  And none of them put him into the GOAT argument like we did right after he finished playing.  If you are too young, Dan Marino may as well be Dan Fouts for all the aerial success that each had that never amounted to Superbowl victories.

Currently, my 3-0 Broncos are stuck in the middle of an approach that calls for running even when it doesn't result in large production.  It is hard to argue with the record, yet easy to question the run game results, assuming of course you are the naturally paranoid type of person who needs to question such things of an undefeated team.

I could address the question of the run game by reminding Denver's critics of the defensive stalwarts that opposed us to open the season. Baltimore, Kansas City and Detroit- teams with well developed defensive identities of their own-  are teams that also like to run the ball and play good defense themselves.   Yet, that would sound like an excuse since way too many of us have insisted that running is the only way to really win in the end.

We and thee (Broncos), are equally aware of the necessity of running the ball, which is why this year appears to a be run game that isn't working instead of one that got abandoned altogether long before games end as was the case many nights under John Fox.

Save for the close out, 10 minute possession in the Baltimore game that was rich with running, the results in the run game have appeared to be less than stellar.  But, if you factor in the time of possession victories that have insured a fresh defense; one that is currently number two in total takeaways on a team that is leading the NFL in turnover differential, then the scenario appears more like a star rising to meet its stellar stature.

These Broncos are bullies by intention.  It may not appear that way with our 55 yards per game run average, but they've destroyed opposing run games and created key turnovers whenever opposing run games have titled the field against us (11 turnovers, 10 takeaways through 3 games).

Manning is taking a few too many hits and had a few too many turnovers himself while slow footing it out from under center, so Coach Gary Kubiak has been forced to compromise his run dreams by adding way too many pistol sets (QB in the shotgun with running backs behind the QB) in an attempt to keep opposing defenses somewhat honest.

But that also places our running backs an additional few yards behind the line of scrimmage versus a normal "underneath the center" run attack. creating a stronger necessity for a crafty and capable running back to cause misses and make up the lag. Until the running backs improve their pass blocking, the whole plan will have to adjust a bit explaining an offense that is sputtering beyond the run game.

CJ Anderson is nursing injuries from that first game beating he took, and Juwan Thompson just joined him on the beaten and battered list, but Ronnie Hilman is still fresher, running for his future, and seems to create those necessary misses that has kept opposing defenses honest.  Even with dinged up backs and marginal production, there has been no disrespect or disregard for Denver's run game.

In fact, the opposite is true in that teams have committed mightily to stop our run, opening up Denver's pass game to just enough breathing room to win games for us.  From my point of view, the passing game is much more shaky when you consider the easy connections we nearly made and the impressive catches we've had to make to fill the void and save games.

But even that is some nit picky, bull crap paranoia.

Yo Bronco fans!  Chill out and stop
playing fantasy football with your
home team players.

For me, the signs are so clear that I've lost my room to criticize, and thus my reason to write a bunch of paranoid postings like we pundits have correctly crafted to condemn the home team for 3 years straight.  Sure, they could get better in areas, but the last three Peyton Manning seasons have placed a huge premium on looking good over being good when being good matters most, in the playoffs.

This team appears to have come up short if you consider the mere presence of Manning as a reason why we should have won at least one of the last three Superbowls.  The true narrative is that we've only played for one of three and lost the only Superbowl we played in rather resoundingly, looking like a team that really had no reason to be in that game in the first place.

I don't know if this team will win it all.  What I know is that they are seriously building to become one that can. No, I've never built a championship football team, but I've seriously played with enough building blocks to trust the quality of this design.