Elston Gunnn

It's on ESPN Deportes, ESPN3, and WatchESPN. 10 a.m., EDT Here's a good site. http://www.livesoccertv.com/schedules/2017-08-04/

The Chelsea away match will be moved to Sun Aug 27, or if we're lucky to Mon or Tues 28/29. But this will be a very difficult stretch. Here's a quick list of our August fixtures. Sun 6 - Sevilla (H) Sat 12 - Stoke (H) Thurs 17 - Hajduk Split (H) Mon 21 - Man City (A) Thurs 24 - Hajduk Split (A) Sun/Mon/Tues 27-29 - Chelsea (A) Travel exhaustion will not be a problem from now through the City match. But playing in Croatia a mere 3 days after City will be a major problem, so we need to take a 2-goal lead into that second leg, preferably 2-0 or 3-0. Our chances away to Chelsea at the end of this stretch look slim right now, especially if that match is moved only to Sun Aug 27. I'd say that Chelsea match is the least important of our next six matches, even including the Sevilla friendly.

I agree that this might become a problem, not only for Davies but for several others. The key to keeping most players relatively satisfied is to progress in our 3 cup competitions, and to have at least some rotation in the starting lineup for EPL matches. Our squad is now - or will be with 1-2 more transfer additions - deep enough to cope with deep runs in 2-3 cup competitions. Although the League Cup is the least important, even there it will cause problems if we get knocked out early. And elimination today would be so very discouraging for players and fans. We all know we need that first goal today. Edit: I should have added, re Davies, that he might be able to play effectively in several different positions/roles. I want to see him play regularly. But I also want to see Gana, Klassen, 2 players right now who seem to be just ahead of Davies at DCM and ACM. Repeat: we've got good depth in the middle of the pitch. Advance in the cup competitions and they'll all play plenty.

Here's a new article by Senator Jeff Flake, a real conservative and rising star in the Republican Party, straightforwardly admitting that he and his party have erred in making their Faustian bargain with Trump. Flake's honesty is refreshing, as he gives a couple of examples of his own "monumental dodges" of the truth about Trump. He's encouraging others to face the reality of the danger of Trump, and bluntly says that Republicans must not cower when Trump "plays to his base." http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/31/my-party-is-in-denial-about-donald-trump-215442

I'm just guessing it's 50/50 whether Trump lasts. There's no reason to doubt that something(s) close to obstruction of justice will be discovered by Mueller's investigation. Heck, nearly a majority of Americans already think he's obstructed justice! But unless multiple "smoking gun" examples of obstruction of justice are uncovered, House Republicans are hardly likely to bring articles of impeachment. Moreover, the Constitution requires a 2/3 Senate vote for conviction on an article of impeachment for a President to be removed from office. So fhe 2018 midterm elections will probably determine his fate. And our fate. Today's breaking news is the Scaramucci firing. I'm surely not the only (nit)wit to chortle that "Scaramucci has been repealed and replaced." Tonight's bigger breaking news, reported by the Wash Post, is that the President himself dictated his son's lying statement about the purpose of Donald Jr's infamous meeting with the Russians. I'm hoping - and don't totally discount the possibility - that Trump will resign before 2020 election. I'm probably hallucinating.

Here's an interesting summary of a new book examining the American meltdown. Worth a few minutes of your time. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/america-the-divided-why-the-great-melting-pot-is-having-a-meltdown/?utm_source=kw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-07-27 It goes beyond Trump, though both directly and indirectly it does have a lot to say about Trump's base. As I contend that today's Republican Party is "reactionary" rather than conservative, I appreciate Jouet's observation that Republicans "have moved toward a peculiar conception of conservatism by both U.S. historical standards and international standards."

12 players

I agree with the importance of the example you cite, but not with the conclusion you draw. Yes, it's appalling that we are panic-stricken about "evil Muslims," but not about regular, "American as apple pie" violence. And the "evil Muslims" theme does act as a powerful filter, a form of propaganda. But to move from that excellent example to suggest that all news outlets are equally guilty of applying biased filters does not at all persuade me. I concede that there are few completely objective news sources, but I do not concede that, for example, the PBS News Hour's filter is anywhere near as biased as Fox News's. There are, moreover, multiple roughly-objective print news sources. Another TV example: I watch a lot of MSNBC, which some might think as biased on the liberal side as is Fox News on the conservative side. Nonsense. MSNBC has gone out of its way to hire and to feature actual conservative (as opposed to reactionary-fake-conservative) commentators for its many panels. To be fair, Fox has done a little of this, too, in reverse. But overall, if one were to watch Fox News from early morn to midnight M-F, and do the same the next day for MSNBC, one would get piles of shallow "analysis" from Fox, as opposed to solid politicsl reporting and analysis from dozens of qualified reporters and field-expert analysts on MSNBC. The major problem on MSNBC is that almost all their "hosts" cannot shut up. Rather than asking sensible questions of their expert reporters and guests, they interrupt over and over.

Really interesting post, Cornish Steve. The issue about which we have disagreed - whether millions of Trump voters may be accurately characterized as either ignorant or stupid - is actually less interesting to me than your heartfelt comments about your fellow evangelicals. As you say, that's another matter, but it does interest me. Whatever the sources of Trump's support, the stark predictions you offer certainly fit my view that Trump presents a looming existential crisis. As frightened as I am, and as appalled as I have become at the Republican Party's fool's bargain with Trumpism, I wouldn't predict the course of events that you outline in your second paragraph. I do, in fact, expect the fierce set of progressive and moderate counter-forces already appearing to grow. I don't expect Trump to retain all of his support, much less increase it. Yet I admit that your truly grim scenario is conceivable, especially if external or unpredictable events throw American society, politics, or economics into disarray. That it is even conceivable that the US might experience a national crisis that would dwarf a "mere" constitutional crisis is unnerving.

You raise some important points here. I agree with part of what you say, but I draw a different conclusion. The word "dumbass" is, yes, an oversimplification. But behind that insulting label is a big issue. How can we accurately describe Trump voters? I tend to split Trump's voters into 3 main categories: (1) Right-wing Christian fundamentalists, (2) white working class, and (3) "come home to Trump" traditional Republicans. Certainly there is some overlap among these groups. And Trump also drew votes from minisucle, if menacing, "alt-right white nationalist" movement. As I've posted a couple of times in this thread, yes, as you say, they - especially groups (1) and (2) - do look back with rose-colored specs. Thus they are generally mis-labeled "conservative," when in fact they are "reactionary," a political term that denotes those who yearn to go back in time to a supposed better age. For the most part they do not merely want to "conserve" things as they are; rather, they are offended by much of "things as they are," and so hope to recreate a lost past. In doing so, however, they apply irrational, unscientific, "alternative" facts to describe current conditions. They invent a comforting, intuitive counter-reality. Christian fundamentalists, for example, are largely motivated by their opposition to abortion and gay people, both of which they see as abominations unto the Lord. In this they are encouraged - as you note - by a powerful right-wing, racist ideology, promulgated especially by aggressive talk radio and Fox News. I guess we're faced with something of a chicken/egg question: Do ignorant (of science, politics, economics, world issues, common sense established facts) people choose to listen to and believe right-wing radio ranters and Fox's Sean Hannity? Or does listening to right-wing fantasists render one ignorant? I'm inclined to say these are mutually reinforcing. Apologies for repeating, but: willful ignorance is dangerously stupid. So I absolutely agree with you that we must not underestimate the influence of agressive right-wing forces. But I think I disagree with you in that I don't see how we can separate such forces from their impact in producing much more ignorance and stupidity among the millions of consumers of such right-wing tripe. As for the 3d group I listed above - the "come home to Trump" traditional Republicans - I'm inclined to emphasize not their ignorance so much as their cynicism. For millions of traditional Republicans began the last Presidential primary season laughing at Clown Trump. Gradually they became embarrassed by his shockingly successful primary campaign, Bully Trump, in which he insulted and belittled American war heroes and judges, before honing his insult/belittling skills on his Republican primary opponents: making fun of a female candidate's looks, calling one "little," another "crazy," still another "low-energy." By then traditional Republicans ceased laughing, and began desperately hoping one of Trump's final primary opponents could catch fire and save the Party from his sure-to-lose candidacy. But it was too late. Trump's super-angry base kept growing, so the traditional Republican mainstream, actually conservative-as-opposed-to-reactionary, faced a terrible choice: either sit out the election, maybe even vote for Horrible Hillary, or put 3 clothespins on their noses and vote for Candidate Chaos. The vast majority of mainstream Republicans made their bargain with the devil and "came home to Trump," hoping the Presidency would "tame" him. Gradually more and more Republican "leaders" find themselves forced to respond to the latest Trump outrage. But having abetted the birth of President Chaos, and having enabled him during the first few months of the growth of Trumpestilence, they must walk a thin line between continuing to hope against hope that Trump will come to his senses, and recognizing that they must stop the maddest of his voluminous madnesses. As best we can tell from ongoing polling, Trump has lost some, a little, support among traditional Republicans - real conservatives, as opposed to cynics and reactionaries. And heaven knows at least some of his working class and poor white supporters are just beginning to be confused by Trump "policies" that are sure to harm them. But mostly they stick with him, still proudly wear their Make America Great hats at his rallies. And he seems not at all to have lost the steadfast support of his Christian fundamentalist enthusiasts (those who believe in Genesis and Revelations, but not evolution). So, I don't think it's so easy, at all, to conclude that a significant proportion of Trump voters are ignorant folks intent on making themselves stupid. And maybe it's an open question whether willfully choosing to think of talk radio as fact-based is sensible or stupid. Maybe, but I'd have to bend over backwards to actually think that's an open question. As of right now tens of millions of Trump supporters look at dozens of crystal-clear, unique-in-American-Presidential-history examples of Trump's lying, cheating, cowardice, bullying, perfidy, and sheer incompetence, and ....... continue to support him and hope he makes America great again. Trump has in a mere six months become an embarrassment unique in American Presidential history. And the vast majority of his supporters are not embarrassed. In my opinion, and granting the fear and desperation afoot in the US, it is not easy to label Trump supporters ignorant and stupid. But neither is it wise to ignore the strength of and reasons for the symbiosis between Trump and his passionate base. Trump's loyal base, so far, is too ignorant, stupid, misguided, ill-informed - something - to see that this symbiotic relationship is a one-way street.

I'd be interested. In hearing comments about this lineup. I guess factors would include away setting, strategy/tactics for different formations, personnel strengths/weaknesses for this formation below. 3-3-3-1 Pickford Jagielka Keane Williams Davies Schneiderlin Baines Klassen Rooney Mirallas Sandro I'd like to see Davies in there. I'm confident he'll work energetically and smartly both going forward and defending. If he runs out of gas, Gana in at 60 minutes. I'd want Lookman on for Mirallas by 65-70 minutes, unless Everton are ahead 2-0 and it makes more sense to bring on extra defenders to close out the tie. Overall, is back 3 a good or bad idea, given the specific circumstances of this match?

In the early hours of last night/this morning, I watched the Senate vote on the hilariously, pathetically named "Skinny repeal" bill. It was incredibly dramatic. Symbolic of the utter chaos that is the Trump "administration," we had the outlandish situation that almost all Republicans voted for a bill that almost none of them wanted to see become law. They desperately hoped that somehow passing this idiotic bill would allow them to conference with the US House leaders to craft an entirely different bill to destroy Obamacare. To be clear, I personally think Obamacare is deeply flawed, and Democrats acknowledge that it needs reforming. Given last night's result, Trump has already tweeted his hope that Obamacare "implodes," so we can expect he and Republicans generally will "administer" the Obamacare part of the American healthcare system in such a way as to punish millions of working and poor Americans. And yes, millions of these millions voted for Trump. For the most part, this healthcare fiasco affects only Americans. But the world - the rational part of the inhabitants of this planet - should be very worried about the Trump presidency, and its near-total incompetence. A mere 6 months into this Presidency, Trump's incompetence threatens world stability. I use the term "Trumpestilence" as a way of saying the President is an existential threat, a looming plague. There are very, very few competent people in the Trump administration. Right now, today, only Secretary of Defense James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster are capable of dealing with a foreign policy crisis. Leaders around the world - UK, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, North Korea, you name it - either must plan how to protect themselves in a US-gone-mad world, or gladly plan how to take advantage of a US-gone-mad. Trump's total - total - instability threatens the precarious stability of an already unstable world.

I will guess that this is a fair summary of what must be the overwhelming consensus on TT. Perhaps one or two might cavil at the not totally provable assertion that RK doesn't want him, but overall, we (nearly) all agree with Hafnia. And thank him for bringing us together as we prepare for our exciting opening to our Europa campaign!

I'll offer 2 answers to Lowensda's "How have you done this?" question. (1) Structurally, MJB's reference to the Electoral College is the key. The Electoral College was from beginning - 1787, when the Constitution was written - designed to offer some protection to small (less population) states, which were afraid they'd be overwhelmed politically by the large states. One way to give a measure of such protection was to make all states equal in the US Senate by giving all states 2 Senators. So, sparsely populated states such as Wyoming, South and North Dakota, and Montana have the same number of US Senators as the most populous state, California. But as each state's Electoral College vote total equals its number of members in the US House of Representatives plus 2 (its number of Senators), this means the less populous states are overrepresented in the Electoral College. It's not a proportional-to-population system. This is why it's possible for a candidate to win the popular vote, but lose the Electoral College. This has rarely happened in US history, but in a closely divided country as we now are, it might happen more frequently. And of course it did happen in 2016, as Trump won by a solid Electoral College majority, while Clinton won a solid popular vote majority. (2) But the much deeper problem - in my very unapologetic opinion - is noted in MJB's other tag quote above: dumbasses. More precisely, our incurious ignoramus of a President was elected by millions of incurious ignoramuses. I won't repeat literally every word I posted in posts 1177 and 1179 above. But the phenomenon of stubborn, willful ignorance leading to dangerous stupidity has led the US to this catastrophe. We now have tens of millions of Americans who essentially don't believe in science, don't believe in evidence, don't believe in facts. Although they may call themselves "conservative," they are actually "reactionaries," who yearn to recreate the US of the 1950s, when the US was on top of the world, women, African Americans, and children knew their place, and God was pleased.

I'll repeat something I said earlier, sort of thinking aloud, willing to be corrected. In my view, we should not shy away from using hard words to describe Trump, who represents an existential threat to democracy. Admittedly, there's a danger in using hard words, as such a harsh verdict may well offend the vast majority of Trump voters. I am myself pretty close to a hermit, so I have had no occasion to engage Trump loyalists. Although polls seem to indicate some erosion in Trump-support, that he is still viewed favorably by 38-40% of his voters, after multiple - multiple multiple - outrageous acts, is deeply troubling. Millions of Americans are so desperately angry that they've gone mad. At any rate, avoiding for now the issue of Trump's faithful supporters, here are the hard words I think we cannot avoid applying to Trump himself. These words, I think, can be supported by multiple examples. Some of them refer to his character, others to his personality. But I am not certain I can keep these categories straight, or separate. Trump's character -- sociopath pathological liar extreme narcissist amoral vulgarian incurious ignoramus Trump's personality -- And here I think of his strikingly ugly "performance" Monday night at the Scout Jamboree, his latest outrage. boor -- ill-mannered churl -- mean-spirited lout -- uncouth Perhaps these "personality words" might equally be applied to the stereotypical football hooligan. (Some of you would know better than I; not because of personal history, but because of geographic proximity.). But if so, it cannot be controversial to say that we really should not abide a football hooligan in the American Presidency.

My go-to site is this one. http://www.livesoccertv.com/schedules/2017-07-27/ Unfortunately, it's not listed. Nor is it listed on FoxSports 1 or 2. So very unlikely. However ...... if we progress to next stage, called play-off round, it's possible FS 1 and/or 2 will start showing all Everton and Arsenal Europa League matches. And almost certainly, if they follow the pattern from last season, FS 1 and/or 2 will show all Everton and Arsenal matches through the remainder of the competition. So, hold on MJB and other Americans. Just cheer us into the next stage, and the odds get better that we'll see all of our remaining EL matches.

MikeO - Glad you quoted that punchline to the Guardian piece. The issue of the ignorance/stupidity of a large subset of Trump voters is for most of my liberal acquaintances a delicate one. And of course most American journalist-commentators tend to discuss Trump voters only in terms of poll numbers. On TV, sometimes commentators will sort of smile nervously, even shake their heads at "real American"/Trump voters' views; but understandably they avoid using the word "ignorance," much less "stupidity." Prominent among my mantras these days is, "willful ignorance is dangerously stupid." This allows me to hedge, by arguing that vast numbers of Trump voters aren't inherently stupid, but that by their willful ignorance they make themselves stupid. In this case dangerously stupid. At some point the line between deep, deep ignorance and stupidity is meaningless. I'll be surprised if we don't move inexorably toward a constitutional crisis. Honestly, for me, we're already there.

This will be a long post. I'll link to 3 articles, and offer my own analysis, the thrust of which is that Trump is a total disaster, but that the deeper problem is that large majorities of Trump voters exhibit willful ignorance that is dangerously stupid. Existentially dangerous to democracy. First, an in-depth poll. Just scroll to 2d page, the Russia stuff. You'll be amazed at the willful ignorance. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2017/PPP_Release_National_71817.pdf Then a good article by an actual conservative, as opposed to reactionary nutters posing as modern American conservatives. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/07/19/donald-trump-jr-moral-treason-gabriel-schoenfeld-column/484361001/ And more to the point I want to empasize, here's a piece from the Guardian on some (willfully ignorant) Trump voters. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/20/donald-trump-support-base-hillary-clinton-hatred-pennsylvania And now, my own take, for now. As "Trumpestilence" will not end in the very near future, I suppose my critique of him and his base may grow even darker...... Although one might quibble over what percentage of Trump voters fail the test of sentience, strictly defined, Schoenfeld (2d link above) is right in the everyday sense that one has to be willfully ignorant to deny Russian interference and Trump campaign encouragement thereof. Schoenfeld's reference to a large percentage of Trump voters being unwilling to acknowledge explicit disloyalty strikes me as a perfect example of the hypocrisy of the superpatriots, who act so unpatriotically as to demonstrate Paul Krugman's observation that millions of Republicans "hold basic American political values in contempt." Basic. Contempt. Schoenfeld's reference to "calling things what they are" leads me to note that we need more articles with analyses of the "unimaginable depth of delirium of these lost souls." Some subsets of the Trump Coalition are more delirious and lost than others, but they all either fully represent or are willing to manipulate "reactionary populism," a desperate desire to turn back the clock to the 1950s, when white men ran the country, oil was plentiful, and God was on our side. The delirious, willful ignorance of these lost souls pushes us ever closer to existentially dangerous stupidity. Trump is a sociopath, a pathological liar, an extreme narcissist, an amoral vulgarian. But this incurious ignoramus was elected by millions of incurious ignoramuses. They don't care that Trump knows nothing, because... he's not Hillary Clinton! (Or any other uppity woman.) They are angrily proud to support a man who speaks - all the more powerful for his honest, if buffoonish, inarticulateness - what's on their minds. A real man of the real people, talking their kind of straight talk. Exactly: their kind of straight talk. The survey cited in the 1st link above and the article about Trump voters (3d link above) do begin to tiptoe nervously toward the subject most critics prefer to avoid: what we euphemistically refer to as "low-information voters." This is perhaps a misnomer: they have plenty of info; it's just inaccurate, false info. Thus, low-information voters are more accurately characterized as high-misinformation voters. It is an act of willful ignorance to depend on Fox and nutter-radio for one's "news." Fox and talk radio-misinformed viewers/listeners are daily rendered more, not less, ignorant. They are living - and alas, voting - proof that the line between extreme ignorance and deranged stupidity is at some point so nanothin as to become invisible, meaningless. The Emperor has no clothes? The naked dullardry of millions of the Emperor's fiercely loyal subjects is pretty tough to continue to ignore. We cannot look away, or avoid this discomfiting popular derangement. Cynical Republican "leaders," having adopted the calculated, dicey strategy of "coming home to Trump," now look hoist by their own petard. Two of the Great Cynics of the early 21st century, Speaker Paul Ryan and Leader Mitch McConnell, bemoan TweetTrump, but delicately avoid commenting on metastasizing Trumpestilence. Occasionally - such as in some responses to recent revelations of Trump, Jr's attempted collusion-by-patsy - one of them will mutter some half-chastisement. I assume the vast majority of Republican Senators fantasize that Trump might somehow depart the Presidency, so the dependable VP Pence can calm our dyspeptic political waters and revive Reaganism. But until then, because they are cynical cowards who recognize and fear, but dare not confront, the ghastly stupidity of so many of their constituents, they are stuck trying to control the temper tantrums of our first Fantasist-President. Here's hoping Special Counselor Robert Mueller is following the money: "What is President Trump hiding, and why is he hiding it?" This should be the mantra of the Democrats, and of all actual, as opposed to faux, American patriots. It echoes the famous Watergate question, but is more precise, and gets to that which Trump most fears: revelations about his financial misdeeds over decades. The answer, generally, is already pretty clear, but we don't know the despicable details; and we have to pretend that there might be some "logical explanation" for Trump's strange Presidency. The bloody obvious explanation is that he's an existentially dangerous sociopath who has cheated virtually everyone with whom he has done business, and, most dismaying and ominous of all, that his "reactionary populist"/"real people" base have made themselves by their willful ignorance his willing accomplices in destroying American democracy.

As an American who only started paying attention to football in the late 1990s, I was unaware of any of this story 20 years ago. For that matter, I was mostly ignorant of it until 20 minutes ago! But I'll guess some of you know lots or some of this story, and might find this article a pleasant (or unpleasant?) stroll down memory lane. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jul/23/deceit-determination-murdochs-millions-how-premier-league-was-born

With Schneiderlin and Barry, Everton have 2 excellent controlling DCMs. Rooney didn't look slow or old. Playing like he has something to prove. Ran a lot, clever passes and flicks.

Flemish?

Reason to think Rooney and Sandro know how to play together. Klaassen, too. Like to see more play down left, through Baines, rather than right through Holgate. Hope to see Kenny second half. Gana's energy, Schneiderlin's calmness still on display. Hot there, say announcers, so presumably we'll see lots of subs by 60-65 minutes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xcBZzZvNj1E

4-2-3-1? 4-3-3? Hope to find a stream.

3 UK, 10 am EDT