Dr. Gonzo

Yeah it blows my mind that the media really loves talking about how much Biden looks diminished despite... Trump never looking all there even when he was running for president in the first place.

Tbh I still think a senile Biden would handle a national crisis better than the way the Trump administration handled the pandemic. Basically locked down for a year didn't really do anything other than talk about "Operation Warpspeed," which in the end turned out to be them just sitting on their hands and letting the individual states handle the pandemic and hoping they wouldn't need much guidance from the federal government. And watching Biden's speech yesterday, it was a trainwreck... up until he started talking about foreign policy and there you can see he's still sharp, and that's been his strong suit for as long as I've known about Biden. If you compare that to Trump's performance in Helinski, I think despite the horrible flubs that can't be overlooked, he still comes off looking better than Trump. Let's also not forget Trump has called Nikki Haley "Nancy Pelosi" a couple of times, he keeps talking about Hannibal Lector like he thinks he was a real person (and it's odd how many times he's mentioning how much admiration he has for a fictional character that he seems to think is real),and has gone on many bizarre rants about boat batteries and sharks lately. But Biden really should step down. A recent survey found that 67% of Americans find an election between Biden and Trump to be embarrassing and wishing that the parties had different candidates. It shows that there's a big disconnect between registered republicans and democrats, who turn out to vote in their parties primaries, and the registered voters with no party affiliation or third party affiliation that don't have a say in the primary process. They're both totally unfit to be leading a super power, that's for sure. There's been increasing pressure on Biden to step down since the debate, but after the speech yesterday the knives are coming out for him. Most of the country seems to recognise they're both unfit to lead - it looks like one party is talking about how their candidate should probably not run though while the other is all in. If he drops out, I think the tactical way to announce it would be to do it as close to the RNC next week as possible. They'll have a lot of canned material for trashing Biden that'll need to be scrapped or look out of date, it'll also take some of the media focus off the RNC and put it on Harris or whoever the hell the democrats end up choosing. That makes too much sense though so the democrats will probably do something after the RNC because competence and US politics don't mix too well.

Yeah Biden’s finished. More and more democrats are calling on him to drop out.

I'd go with @Gunnersaurus's answer and say lobster too

Sadly, I don't think we'll be lucky for much longer.

This is going to keep happening because neither side is really serious about a ceasefire, even though Hamas had a breakthrough in getting Israel to commit to a permanent ceasefire if hostages are released. But Hamas doesn't want to release all of the hostages, and Israel wants a veto on the selection of Palestinian hostages to be released - I can't see a world where the leadership of either side views this compromise as palatable. Reports indicate that Netanyahu no longer takes any pressure from the US in ending the war seriously after Biden looking like a reanimated corpse (but with no energy) seriously. And we both know it's not like the US ever puts a tremendous amount of pressure on Israel, but Biden has been pushing for a permanent ceasefire... and it's unlikely Netanyahu even answers his calls now. And he probably won't unless democrats have a good result in November... which basically all polling is suggesting that is a pipe dream. Israel barely listens to the US, but they don't really listen to anyone else. But otherwise, I can't see Israel changing course anytime until January where a new US president comes in. The problem there is it's most likely going to be Trump - and Trump is most certainly not someone who gives a fuck about Palestinian human rights and was really big on pandering to Israel. After all, he did manage to enflame the region just to make Jerusalem have the US embassy and recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capitol even though there was no reason to do this other than to make Netanyahu happy. And he was president when the US released Jonathan Pollard, the spy who likely gave Israel nuclear capability, to Israel - where he would go on to be a cheer leader for the radical Ben Gvir and advocate for further displacement of Palestinian Arabs to make room for illegal Israeli settlements. And as the war drags on we're seeing more and more Palestinians in Gaza willing to come forward and speak out against Hamas and even hold protests against them. Sadly, we're seeing Palestinians resisting Hamas being brutally repressed by Hamas - because maintaining control of the Gaza strip has always been more important to them than the wellbeing of Palestinians. Gotta feel for Palestinians who live under Hamas. The double oppression of being seen as worthless lives to Israel's government, and merely sacrificial pawns by their own government is insane. I don't see how this ends without massive international pressure applied to both Israel and Palestinian leadership. We've seen for decades and decades now, Palestinian leadership and Israeli leadership don't have the appetite or willingness to make peace and live as neighbors. And while I never would have supported the creation of Israel, the fact is well before most people alive today were born - Israel was created, it would be hard to "undo" this without committing another atrocity like the Nakba but with the shoe on the other foot... so I don't think that's really palatable. But with Israel's PM seeing this war as a way to keep himself in power and out of a jail cell, I can't see this ending without western support for Israel involving putting meaningful pressure on them; and by the same token, I don't think Hamas will ever be serious about peace until the likes of Iran, Qatar, and now Turkey (weirdly) don't use them as pawns for their own political agendas. I don't see that happening anytime soon and I think Hamas bit off way more than it could chew on October 7th, thinking that attack would be treated the same as other attacks in the past - they thought it would be a vicious response from Israel, but only lasting a few months. Instead I think they've got an IDF and an Israeli government that are going to treat all Palestinians as Hamas and are probably going to be hoping for a land grab of large chunks of Gaza as the end-game for this war.

I don't think humans are smart enough to change the way they run the world. I feel like the world is getting eerily similar to how things were before the first World War and as we become further removed from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world's collective memory of the horrors of nuclear war is going to wane to where it's not taken seriously by most people. Similar to how the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars faded from memory in Europe and 114 years later world powers would mass mobilise their massive armies like those wars hadn't ended -without much regard for how human's weapon technology meant fighting like that would lead to horrific carnage. We're, for the most part, seeing major powers of the world begin to pick sides and those sides seem to be pushing for greater conflict with one another. And an aside from that, I do think it's pretty strange how the mainstream media seems to treat hospital bombings as: Russia does it = bad; Israel does it = good; when very clearly both are bad. And at the same time, social media seems to be mostly filled with people saying Israel does it = bad; Russia does it = not even worthy of discussing. I suppose it highlights the disconnect between mainstream media and social media, and what news they view as worthy of coverage & what people they view as deserving sympathy. And honestly, it's pretty shocking. Because neither proper journalists nor random people on social media should have anything but contempt for deliberate strikes on hospitals.

Yeah for sure. I don't really think he was thinking, lol, which is understandable - he had his young kid in harms way and even once the toddler's been moved to safety and been protected, I fully understand him being incredibly angry. But him jumping into the stands to throw punches is just wildly stupid. The police in the stadium were a disgrace though, not really sure why they were so uninvolved the whole way through (even when Darwin gets involved, he even takes a punch to the face right in front of a cop). Just an overall stupid situation, imho. The Colombia fans being stupid for starting the chaos in the first place, the Charlotte police for... not doing...anything..., and the Uruguayan players for thinking "yeah let's go jump in and beat the shit out of them, that'll show them." Having been to Charlotte for work, like the Colombia and Uruguay players, I will say that it is a deeply unpleasant place and I fully understand just generally being more pissed off than normal just from being there. So if they're considering mitigating factors, there's a lot they have to consider. And I hope he does avoid a ban, or the ban is only for international matches... because for all the stick I gave him for not putting away so many golden opportunities last season, he is an important player for us and does have the potential to grow into a truly terrifying striker if he can develop just a drop of composure in front of goal.

He needs to update his bio to remove Deputy Leader of Reform UK

I think when you consider the context that his family was no longer in danger when he jumped in, it's harder to justify. I can't see him not getting some sort of ban for this. Hopefully if I'm right it's just an international ban though and that would actually be a massive benefit to us tbh. But I imagine FIFA will see this and take it seriously, because players doing this to a group of people who've already shown they'll be violent dickheads is just going to increase the likelihood of someone (or more than someone) getting seriously hurt. Maybe they'll consider the context of he's emotional because his young toddler was put in a situation a toddler should never have been put in, and consider the context of the police doing absolutely nothing to calm that situation.

He jumped into the stands after his family had been moved away from the fan attack though. I understand being emotional, but doing that is just stupid - it's egging on a group of people who've demonstrated they're willing to be violent, and putting himself and other people in unnecessary risk of being seriously hurt. If a player can get a second yellow after a yellow card offense for complaining a bit with no real time to cool down and accept what's happened, I don't see why a player wouldn't get punished for reacting like that after the players' families had been moved onto the pitch. Obviously he's not picked a random fan or group to attack, but once his family's safe he's really got no business getting directly involved. It's not his job to fight people or keep the peace - that's the police's job.

I suspect they went with NFL stadiums to make the most money they could do that for cash-grabbing purposes, because the capacities of MLS stadiums compared to NFL stadiums is tiny when you actually compare them. I'm pretty sure the world cup is mostly going to be using NFL stadiums too (if not entirely using NFL stadiums).

I think the officiating will be better just because we won't have the CONMEBOL refs be the only refs in the world cup. @Stan and @The Palace Fan will be pleased to know me watching the Copa America has given me an appreciation for the shite refs of the prem, because as bad as they are... holy shit, they are so much better than these refs that CONMEBOL's picked as their best refs to attend this tournament. From a security standpoint, I suspect FIFA's going to be better about organising things than things have been for this year's Copa America. But one thing FIFA doesn't really control is the actual police officers meant to be keeping things safe. Watching those Charlotte cops just stand there and do absolutely nothing to calm that situation was a bit fucked lol.

So how long do we think Nunez gets banned for? I imagine Slot woke up today, saw what happened in the Copa America, and said “what the fuck?!”

I think Nunez and the Uruguay players jumped into the stands after their families were moved away from them. Doesn’t really bode well for the North America World Cup, although better to have it happen now and learn from this. The police in that video are wildly useless though.

It’s literally on her Wikipedia page lol - what do you mean it’s not made public?

Yes, he’s a fucking lunatic. He’s probably going to get a long ban.

Darwin Nunez is fucking crazy

Palmer and Ollie Watkins dislike this sentiment

Amanda Staveley's entire career has been being a middle-woman for bringing Middle Eastern money to British and American business, being the friendly face that helps ease them in, and then getting her cut and fucking off to do it again. This was never going to be any different.

Dunno if it's worth the risk. Managers like Pep take time to get their philosophy through to players at the club level - international managers don't have nearly as much time to get their ideas across. I think that's typically why international football generally has more simplistic tactics than club football. I think we'd just be wanting to appoint the best manager available for the job. If Pep says "yeah I'm interested, but not for a year" I think the FA's either got to say "will paying you a shitload more change your mind" or "sorry pal, maybe next time we need a manager." Didn't Pep say he wants to manage Brazil one day?

Spain's so good

What a fucking goal

England v France is the final this tournament deserves with so much dogshit football throughout the whole thing.

By the way, kind of off topic but... I watched a Ronaldinho highlights video this morning and I thought of you @El Profesor because I got pretty sad thinking about how good Brazil was in the past compared to this current squad that was just knocked out by Uruguay.