Football No Mo'

 For the first time since about 1968 or so, I did not watch the Superbowl. I didn’t watch a  single NFL game all season, for that matter. Why not? ‘Cause it ain’t football anymore, especially after  this past year of COVID/take-a-knee/virtue signaling. It has morphed into some American/European soccer hybrid. With pads.

The wussification began with the three foot rule on wide receivers that Commissar Godawful imposed back, what, five, six years ago? They got rid of the horse collar. And blind side tackles. And anything else that resembled football. Now, if you look at the quarterback cross eyed you get a fifty yard penalty, loss of your next six touchdowns, half your salary taken, and your entire team goes to rehab. Which they’re usually in, anyway.

And then there’s all the baffling rules about a catch and a fumble and what the ground can, or cannot do, and challenges, with more red flags flying than a Chicom picnic, and you need an attorney and about ten minutes of review by the Supreme Court before you can call, or not call, a penalty. God help you if you take a step towards the quarterback while he’s posing back there and casually deciding which of his many untouchable receivers he can pitch to.

But, but, but...the game is now safer!

Safer? Safer! This is FOOTBALL!

Or it used to be. It’s a girly shadow of itself now, which I suppose is appropriate because today’s football players are girly shadows of their forerunners. Whining and simpering over social justice as they pocket unbelievable salaries to play a once-or-twice a week game that doesn’t even require them to have a real education. Which, based on the general inarticulateness and illogic, most of them don’t. They don’t even have to worry about getting hurt anymore. Especially if they’re a quarterback.

And if you think I’m going to watch a bunch of spoiled ingrates take a knee over something they can’t even explain while mouthing bumper sticker complaints about a country so terrible it gives halfwit pituitary cases like them a grand opportunity to make millions instead of working as a bouncer for their cousin’s illegal backyard bar, then no. Never again. Screw the NFL.

I’m going to watch golf, instead. At least it’s full contact.

How to Read Pravda

 What do you do when you no longer believe a word that the news media says or writes? We ‘Muricans don’t know because we were spoiled by Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace but fortunately, we have a model: the Russian people. They don’t believe what they’re hearing and reading any more than we do, but they’ve got a lot more experience with that. After all, they’ve had Pravda for nigh on 80 years now and, over the decades, they developed methods for eking the real news out of the lies they’re told. Since it looks like we’re heading into an all-Pravda-all-the-time environment, we’d best develop those same skills. So here’s some time tested, Russian-approved methods for reading the Post or the Times or listening to MSNBC and the rest of the propaganda stations without being fooled:

1. Apply common sense: If the story doesn’t ring true, then it’s most likely not. Best example is the Russian Collusion accusations made against Trump during the 2016 election, and pretty much every day since. Common sense told you this was bogus. Hillary was a fellow traveler, a dedicated Alinskyite, a woman after their own Russkie hearts. Besides, they’d already paid her millions of dollars in bribes through the Clinton Foundation, and they already knew how incompetent and greedy she was. Easy button reset. So why go with a loose cannon like Trump? Uh uh. Russians are smarter than that.

2. Who benefits: This is the first question a detective asks in a murder investigation, and since the media is murdering the truth, remains a valid technique. Best example, the Chinese COVID, which is a bad cold that only a tiny percentage of people get and to which an even tinier percentage succumb. Yet our businesses were shut down, we were placed under house arrest, and required to don masks. So, who benefitted from that? Well, the Democrats, who used the hyped panic as a means of ramming through unconstitutional voting methods to “protect” us from the zombie plague virus, thereby bringing off a coup. And they accrued extra benefits by destroying the economy. You have no choice but to place yourself under government control if you want to eat.

3. What’s not said: That is the art of reading between the lines. Within the strident affect-embued opinions that pass for news today, there’s always something left out. Takes some practice spotting it, but here’s a good example: the “at least 60 courts have found no evidence of election fraud!” trope that’s now embedded in just about every news story. What they left out: not one of those courts have actually reviewed the evidence. They’ve all rejected the cases on technical grounds. 

So start practicing. Pick up a New York Times, if you can stomach it, and read a couple of articles applying the above. You’ll be amazed how much you understand what’s really going on.

Dosvedanya, comrade.