Florida State Seminoles

[hedge]

That proves Bojangles is better. If you need condiments so bad that you pull a gun to get them, that's not good chicken...

[Professor Tiger]

Perhaps this Bojangles vs Popeyes argument would be a good time to renew the age old argument about BBQ, and how tomato based sauce is the only acceptable sauce, and that vinegar based stuff they serve in Eastern NC is... tragic..

[Jungle Rat]

Shut up

[eCat]

if you're like me, you go to a website and the site asks you to turn off the web blocker, you leave the site. And if you're like many of the Gen Y and older crowd, if the site auto starts a video while you're trying to read an article, you shut it down.

This kills ad revenue for the site so legitimate sites - and I use that term loosely - are in the midst of a bubble burst for digital media

This is significant because in many cases these so called sites make no attempt to hid their bias and may even be at the point where they solely cater to a specific agenda or demographic. They wield some level of influence at their targeted demographic.

By and large the public rejects these sites attempts to profit from their focus presenting it at journalism, at least in the traditional forms at the moment.

I don't know if its good or bad but there is going to be a shakeout where only the heavily money back entities survive and the rest turn into blogs sites from which they started.

I can imagine a situation similar to where we had all these auction sites 15-20 years ago and now there are only a handful of niche sites and Ebay.

[hedge]

"a good time to renew the age old argument about BBQ"

Just to show that I'm not completely doctrinaire on this subject, the best BBQ I've ever had was Texas beef brisket BBQ smoked for 16 hours. Cut in slabs that you could cut with a fork. Well, I say "cut", it was really more like meat pudding, there was no cutting involved, just use the edge of your fork to gently separate the portion you want to eat from the mass on the plate. But in terms of pork BBQ, pulled or otherwise, it's all about the vinegar. Anything with sugary sweet ketchup sauce is trash...

[eCat]

"a good time to renew the age old argument about BBQ"

Just to show that I'm not completely doctrinaire on this subject, the best BBQ I've ever had was Texas beef brisket BBQ smoked for 16 hours. Cut in slabs that you could cut with a fork. Well, I say "cut", it was really more like meat pudding, there was no cutting involved, just use the edge of your fork to gently separate the portion you want to eat from the mass on the plate. But in terms of pork BBQ, pulled or otherwise, it's all about the vinegar. Anything with sugary sweet ketchup sauce is trash...

yea thats right. I never really made the distinction before but I don't want anything but dry rub on brisket. You will ruin it.

Pork requires vinegar based sauce. I must have adopted that line from here because my wife will buy Sweet Baby Rays or some variant and I call it sugar ketchup. I'm sure we have a bottle in the fridge now that is 4 years old and used once...next to the Honey Dijon Mustard

[BigRedMan]

"if you're like me, you go to a website and the site asks you to turn off the web blocker, you leave the site. And if you're like many of the Gen Y and older crowd, if the site auto starts a video while you're trying to read an article, you shut it down."

Nothing more I hate is going to site to read about something and a video starts down in the right corner about something different. And is usually 10x louder than anything else.

[Dave23]

Gus’s is second to none.

Popeye’s blows Bojangles and KFC away.

But Gus’s is on a different plane altogether...

[Dave23]

Texas for brisket, KC for burnt ends...Memphis for everything else.

[eCat]

Vanity Fair....

We see the familiar cycle of hype, and there’s no use fighting it, but, once heart rates have slowed, the same old question remains: so what? Some of the news, such as a Guardian story that Manafort met three times with Julian Assange, seems to be based on nothing at all. But even the solid news turns out to be generally non-earth-shattering. As the journalist Aaron Maté has been pointing out, we already knew the timeline of Cohen’s Moscow efforts, because BuzzFeed had already detailed them in May, painting a picture of a bumbling duo getting high on their own supply. (As for the latest revelations, did Sater and Cohen really think a president of Russia would move into a free $50 million penthouse provided by a U.S. presidential candidate? You have to wonder if they were hitting each other on the head with bricks.) Those who hope that Mueller reveals a shambolic operation with a lot of rascals engaged in sleazy and embarrassing behavior will be happy with the fruits of his labors. But those who hope for an unveiling of indictments linking Putin and Trump in a grand conspiracy have no more reason to celebrate than they did a week or a month ago.

Certainly, Trump’s ethical standards are low, but if sleaziness were a crime then many more people from our ruling class would be in jail. It is sleazy, but not criminal, to try to find out in advance what WikiLeaks has on Hillary Clinton. It is sleazy, but not criminal, to take a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising a dossier of dirt on Clinton. (Just as, it should be mentioned, it is sleazy, but not criminal, to pay a guy to go to Russia to put together a dossier of dirt on Trump. This is one reason why the Clinton campaign lied about its connection to the Steele dossier, albeit without the disadvantage of being under oath.) It is sleazy, but not criminal, to pursue a business deal while you’re running for president. Mueller has nailed people for trying to prevaricate about their sleaze, so we already have a couple of guilty pleas over perjury, with more believed to be on the way. But the purpose of the investigation was to address suspicions of underlying conspiracy—that is, a plan by Trump staffers to get Russian help on a criminal effort. Despite countless man-hours of digging, this conspiracy theory, the one that’s been paying the bills at Maddow for a couple of years now, has come no closer to being borne out. (Or, as the true believers would say, at least not yet.)

As for those tapping along to S.N.L. songs in praise of Mueller and his indictments, they might want to remember that Trump won’t always be in office. The weapons you create for your side today will be used by the other side against you tomorrow. Do we really want the special-counsel investigation to become a staple of presidential life? It’s a creation with few boundaries on scope and a setup that encourages the selection of a suspect followed by a search for the crime, rather than the other way around. This caused calamities in the era of Bill Clinton, and it doesn’t get any better just because the partisan dynamics are reversed.

Let’s take a moment to consider Mueller himself. The cut of his jib is likable, and the trad Brooks Brothers vibe of his wardrobe is a perfect complement to his job title. But it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that he’s playing a political game at this point. To be fair, I’m vulnerable to confirmation bias of my own in this assessment, since about a year ago I suggested that Mueller was going to drag out his investigation until 2019, when Democrats were likely to be back in charge of the House, and seeing a prediction play out can lead to unwarranted certitude. But the reports we’re starting to see suggest a man who’s fallen prey to the same state of mind that warped Ken Starr—namely disgust over the people you’re investigating and a desire to justify the sunk capital.

Our justice system gives prosecutors a frightening amount of power as it is, and nothing tempts misuse of it quite like the belief in a narrative in the face of a disappointing witness. George Papadopoulos has told people he pleaded guilty to perjury because Mueller was threatening to prosecute him as an unregistered agent of Israel. Jerome Corsi insists that Mueller was (and is) threatening him with a raft of indictments unless he signed on to an untrue story of how he came to believe (or know) that WikiLeaks had hacked the e-mails of John Podesta.

We don’t know why Mueller feels Manafort is lying to prosecutors, but we do know that Mueller is either asking him about things that have little to do with Manfort’s guilty plea, i.e. acting as an unregistered agent of Ukraine, or else asking him things that have little to do with the original purpose of Mueller’s investigation, i.e. Russian conspiracy. The former would mean Mueller was tempting Manafort, deliberately or not, to make up a story to please federal prosecutors (“not just sing,” but “also compose,” as a judge on the case warned last May). The latter would mean Mueller was getting out on tangents and allowing his investigation, Starr-style, to lapse into a shape-shifting creature with few self-imposed limits. Furthermore, solitary confinement is severe punishment, and Manafort has been in it for months. No one doubts that Manafort is a liar, and everyone knows he’s maneuvering for a presidential pardon. He should go to jail for his financial fraud. But that doesn’t mean Mueller is proceeding with a proper sense of proportion or self-restraint.

If it’s any consolation to Trump haters, we san say this much: the special counsel’s office is going to put together a hell of a report. It will have less sex than Starr’s did, but that’s for the best, and the testimony of Michael Cohen will still guarantee a lot of great scenes, many of them certain to become immortal and embarrassing. Trumpworld won’t fare well under a bright light. Like Starr, Mueller is also likely to include footnotes and selections that will hint at criminality, the things he suspects but couldn’t prove, and the most ardent believers in collusion will claim vindication. But the international conspiracies will be few, and the collateral damage of the Russia scare will be extensive, stretching far beyond Trump or his circle to the country as a whole. It might hurt a president who many Americans hate, but even the president’s most ardent foes should reflect on a question that will linger: Was it worth it?

[bluetick]

That is Vanity Fair's conservative contributor, T.A. Frank. He's almost a #neverTrumper, and you can tell by all the references to Donnie's 'sleaziness'. He's a pretty good journalist and author, actually, and his worries about a future where the executive branch is forever hounded by the judiciary and the legislative is kinda valid. But hey - we all knew things were REALLY gonna change with this guy as president, right? It's not like everything will magically go back to normal after he's gone.

[eCat]

I'm not against the idea of having a special counsel investigate the incoming president on a regular basis. For that matter I'd extend it to every returning 3rd term Senator as well. As just a general rule, these people will be audited.

Our assumption is every candidate we elect is corrupt, why not let them know ahead of time that we'll put them under a microscope.

We might lose some great statesmen in the process who say they'd never subject themselves to that kind of scrutiny just to be president. I can live with that.

Its good for Americans to see the amount of effort a candidates has to go thru to get elected in terms of corruption - and its also good for them to see what lengths a candidate will go to in order to keep from going to jail.

In time perhaps, Americans will stop electing these types of people and bring in more idealist who haven't sold their soul

[hedge]

That would be nobody...

[eCat]

That would be nobody...

maybe, but it would be interesting to see how it played out in 15 years

[Professor Tiger]

I'm not against the idea of having a special counsel investigate the incoming president on a regular basis.

Who gets to appoint that special counsel? What is the scope of the investigation? If that special counsel is appointed by the opposing party, with no limits and an infinite budget, then go ahead and plan on every future president being impeached and/or a one term president. There are already two investigators in elections: the opposing party, and the press (only in cases of Republican presidents).

In time perhaps, Americans will stop electing these types of people and bring in more idealist who haven't sold their soul

The last elected president who fit that description was Jimmy Carter. Look at how well that worked out.

[eCat]

I'm not against the idea of having a special counsel investigate the incoming president on a regular basis.

Who gets to appoint that special counsel? What is the scope of the investigation? If that special counsel is appointed by the opposing party, with no limits and an infinite budget, then go ahead and plan on every future president being impeached and/or a one term president. There are already two investigators in elections: the opposing party, and the press (only in cases of Republican presidents).

In time perhaps, Americans will stop electing these types of people and bring in more idealist who haven't sold their soul

The last elected president who fit that description was Jimmy Carter. Look at how well that worked out.

I think its different when its not a witch hunt and is just S.O.P.

[Professor Tiger]

If it's a special prosecutor who is appointed by the opposition party with unlimited scope and resources, it will be a witch hunt. Guaranteed.

[bluetick]

If it's a special prosecutor who is appointed by the opposition party with unlimited scope and resources, it will be a witch hunt. Guaranteed.

You betcha. There's a witch hunt going on right now and everybody involved is in the SAME party, fcol. That's crazy, right? Guaranteed to blow your mind - anytime.

[Professor Tiger]

Mueller, Comey, and the rest of the FBI/DOJ/IC crime family are Republicans like Lester Maddox, George Wallace, and Bull Conner were Democrats.

[Jungle Rat]

So this Individual 1 guy? Any ideas? Sure seems like a piece of shit whoever he is. Or she.