Dr. Gonzo

Don’t fucking ever post with that irritating formatting again, holy shit

There’s some middle ground between signing cheap players that are clearly never going to be good enough, which tbh is an absolute waste of time. Kabak was awful, I assume Davies was worse - so ultimately our first choice CB pairing was Phillips and Rhys Jones… and signing “the right player.” Wasnt Salah not Klopp’s first choice either. What happened to having other options like we used to? And isn’t wasting money on cheap stopgaps that either are no good, or won’t even play, also wasteful? Or signing a player for a lot of money in an area where we had depth (well before selling off players after signing him), instead of a quality signing a clear problem area?

If that’s the case why did we sign Ben Davies and Arthur… or that shit Turkish lad

I mean I think the Bellingham shit is just to pretend like they're going to spend a load of money before inevitably saying "nah we can't afford him, here's Nunes from Wolves - enjoy" - like the midfielder that Real Madrid ended up getting last summer.

FSG must have only watched us play Bournemouth this season. What a pack of fucking morons

Sheffield Wednesday are the most irresponsible club in the UK and South Yorkshire police are the dumbest cunts in England. And I'm not surprised that something like this ends up happening decades after 1989 when nobody has been held accountable when people died.

Funny how quick Biden's own DOJ managed to launch an investigation into this after he turned himself in, compared to the case of many boxes in that Florida resort from the last president that were not turned in and needed the FBI to go get them - Merrick Garland probably hated when Obama nominated him to be on the Supreme Court and likely cheered when republicans decided not to give him a chance.

It’s probably one of the highest flight taxing countries in the world tbh

Not heard anything about it, most departure taxes are charged on the airline and built into ticket prices though.

For the first time since 2020 before the pandemic... I have to go on a business trip again. It's not even far! But I am absolutely gutted.

The pro-Bolsonero idiocy over the weekend seem to be tied to some US political weirdos like Steve Bannon. Brazil's moving at a much quicker pace with condemning these people though, 400 already arrested. I wonder if they go after people like Bannon who stoked the flames for these gullible idiots to go ahead and do this - and if the US would extradite if that happened.

Drugs and alcohol help. At least 3.

I like how they keep voting despite knowing that he doesn't have the votes so he just keeps losing. It's genuinely hilarious.

It’ll never happen - it’s career suicide for any republicans breaking ranks and working with the democrats for something more moderate. Same reason most republicans who hold office that speak up against other republicans are on the way out of their jobs rather than desperately trying to cling to them. I also don’t think it’s advantageous to the Dems to do anything to help any republicans, even moderates, out of the mess they’ve made. Nor should democrats trust any republicans talking about compromise after the Obama scotus nomination stuff. All this does is make house republicans look like clowns. Which tbf is insulting to clowns, because at least clowns know what they’re doing.

This is actually mental considering how shit we've been this season

Some people are claiming our tactical shift this season is very much like the tactics he had while managing in Holland, which had his team looking like dogshit until he got the sack. He also wrote this book that is full of quotes that make him look like an egotistical cunt that thinks his farts smell like roses. And it's really easy to criticise him after reading some of those quotes. I've got no idea what his influence on the side really is. I'd like to think with so much of the season gone, he and Klopp would adapt instead of sticking to the same shit tactics that... didn't even work in the Netherlands... rather than persist with something that has us looking shit. But none of us have really any idea what's going on behind closed doors at the club. Honestly though it looks like there's a lot of turmoil at the club. Ward leaving at the end of the season, when he's only started in his role in the summer. The issue with club doctors and physios all quitting/getting sacked (depending on who you believe). FSG saying they want to sell, then saying they don't want to sell, then saying "we're open to selling but we're also open to keeping the club." It's a stark and sudden contrast to how FSG had been previously running things before, where we looked like a side that was all on the same page and had a long-term plan to go along with short-term goals.

Yesterday I was kind of intrigued to know if the GOP would pick a guy who's got a pretty questionable past to lead them in congress. Looks like, thankfully, that won't be the case as the American far-right has moved onto someone else they want to be their party leader in congress (although tbh I have no idea if that guy is better or worse than the guy implicated with noncing). It's kind of interesting to see the sort of chaos that we had in the UK with finding a party leader spill over into America. Apparently the last time things were like this was just 4 years before America's civil war broke out...

Not really even close to the worst thing he's ever said or done, tbh. I do think it's funny because I'm fairly certain tories play a large part in why education absolutely must be funded more, maths or otherwise. But I don't think there's so much wrong with this - I think all first world nations should be doing more to promote education, particularly with maths and science. Having said that, I'm not so sure he's actually going to implement anything that actually boosts maths education in the UK. That requires increasing funding for education. I'm fairly certain he doesn't want to increase government spending for anything. So I have no idea how he'd plan on accomplishing this goal. Fixing the NHS should probably be the #1 priority of any British leader right now. But with tories in charge, you've always got to be concerned about whether or not they actually care to do that - because quite a few of them push privitisation (which imo would be an absolute fucking disaster). So there's that. There's no quick fix for the economy either. Things like Brexit, COVID, the impacts of the Ukraine invasion... they all play a factor in why the economy is the way it is. Low growth and rising costs are something that pretty much every country in the world is struggling with right now. I think his plan is just raising taxes while lowering spending to try to stabilise things. I wouldn't expect him to do anything else tbh - he's a fiscal conservative. I don't really think those sorts of policies are good for creating economic growth, personally... but it's probably the least harmful thing a tory government can do in times like these. There's stuff a government can do to promote economic growth... but realistically, we're not going to see that from tories - especially not in this era of ineptitude.

I hope Matip can stay healthy

He’s got that nickname instead of being called Jim Jordan cos he was implicated in some sort of child molestation scandal while he was a wrestling coach

Not that I’m aware of

Day 1 of the GOP being back in charge of the House of Representatives... and it's already a circus. Republicans can't even successfully elect their leader to be speaker of the house on day 1. In the second round of voting... the democrats leader, Hakeem Jeffries, got more votes than the republican leader Kevin McCarthy. And that's after Kevin McCarthy made loads of insane concessions to the more radical wing of the GOP to try to secure the votes. I wonder if the GOP will turn to Gym Jordan to be their next leader.

The US has serious issues with effective laws policing the people who write the laws - there are some things about US politics I just expect to remain corrupt forever because it's been institutionalised in their politics for so long. Allowing these people to use insider information to make trades is a holdover from the laws passed in 1934 to try to prevent another great depression from happening. The requirement that senators/house members have to make the required disclosures is a relatively new invention, that Obama and the democrats pushed for. It was meant to "stop insider trading" but in effect all they could pass was something that just required political leaders to disclose when they had made insider trades, because there was not enough support to outright end it. It's like the lobbying laws in the US, which promote institutionalised bribery. The only reason it's not considered outright corruption is because the corrupt wrote the laws, then the corrupt picked the supreme court justices that would make decisions in cases like Citizens United, or in the cases regarding Gerrymandering (which basically allows parties to break up a state in ways that's favourable to their election chances... rather than breaking up districts into anything logical). It's one reason why I've long felt calling America the "leader of the free world" is a bit stupid... Free countries shouldn't be institutionalising corruption.

If you're not an anti-semite and you let accusations of anti-semitism undermine you because you simply refused to properly condemn anti-semitism... it's not just the media that's undermined you. He played his own part in undermining himself. And if you can't handle that kind of media pressure before you've even won a position of power... well then you're not going to last long if you ever win power. Because any labour leader should absolutely know they're not going to get the kid gloves Boris & co found themselves being punched with, they'll be getting the Mike Tyson in his prime treatment. Messaging and media managing is important. It's more important than actual policies for winning elections because most people on the planet are more stupid than you, I, or most people on these forums can imagine. It honestly should be the baseline for anyone with any hopes of any sort of aspiration for political leadership. And honestly, comparing Bernie Sanders to Corbyn is a disservice to Bernie Sanders. Sanders' messaging is so good that he was twice a contender to lead the US democratic party in the presidential primaries. To really hammer home why that demonstrates he's so good at messaging... he's not even a member of the democratic party, he's an independent. And I think he's aware enough to know that despite how well he did in those primaries, he never really had a shot (especially the first time around when he was considered an outsider threat to the democratic party) - but used his messaging to promote his policies, which in turn influenced younger left-leaning politicians who then got elected to the US house of representatives. Granted, any time Sanders has had to fight accusations of anti-semitism, he's got an easy way of effectively dealing with that shit: he's Jewish. In any case, Corbyn could have learned from Sanders past condemnations of something that should be so remarkably easy to shoot down. But I'm not surprised that Corbyn is infinitely more inept than Bernie Sanders. UK leadership and ineptitude go hand in hand.

Fair point. It's one of those things though where I just can't see anything getting better until things get much worse to where reality is basically smacking them in the face to get them to open their eyes.