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Francisco 2.0

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Francisco 2.0

  1. 17 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

       That article is agenda driven. The problem with Lebron James led teams is that they never get an opportunity to build through the draft. When you are top of the conference seemingly every year what draft picks are you getting? What great player did the Cavs or Heat trade away for older, veteran talent? Wiggins? Come on man. This article is misinformation at best. The Cavs only regret is trading away Kyrie. They were never going to build through the draft.

    You do realize Brian Windhorst really is the media source that Team James leaks shit to for publication, right?

    Had it been written by anyone else, I would understand agenda.  But at this point, Windhorst might as well be on James payroll.  Hell, he has written at least three books I'm aware of about James and his career with Miami and Cleveland.

  2. LBJ's favorite media outlet has seemingly thrown in the towel:

    http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/23517495/lebron-james-cleveland-cavaliers-facing-boston-celtics-organizational-fatigue-nba

    Quote

    The Cavs aren't just battling the ascendant Celtics, they are battling an enemy that has dogged LeBron James teams in the past: It's organizational fatigue, and it's very real.

    Quote

    Like the Miami Heat before them and to a certain extent the last generation's Cavs, it seems to be a side effect of having James: where the quest for championships combined with a lack of security over keeping James leads to some win-now, pay-later decisions.

    Acquire older veterans instead of developing younger players. Sign players to large contracts because they fit with James or because they can't be replaced if they leave in free agency. Trade draft picks to get veterans or as a way to relieve payroll pressure. Deal with the stress of repeated long playoff runs, endure massive media scrutiny, manage varying degrees of drama.

    The players get sick of one another. They get sick of the coach. The coach gets sick of the players. As a group, they lose sight of the process of the season because it becomes monotonous. There are highs -- with James teams there are always highs -- but the baggage everyone is carrying makes the flight that much harder to maintain.

    Quote

    Then there are the issues unique to the Cavs, where the previous successful general manager, David Griffin, and the owner, Dan Gilbert, couldn't work together. The owner and James don't trust each other. The new general manager, Koby Altman, was put in a next-to-impossible situation.

    All of it has worn them out, all of them. Even the new players -- George Hill, Rodney Hood, Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. -- have been roasted for their inconsistent or nonexistent play. But they have to feel as if they jumped on the back of a thoroughbred in the closing stretch, everything is moving so fast and is so disorienting from what they were used to.

     

     

  3. 3 minutes ago, Message Board User said:

    The time to put the right pieces around Lebron was not after 2014, but before and the Cavs screwed that up. They had top 5 picks and other assets and a buttload of cap space.

    So they draft TT at 4 in 2011 instead of Klay or Kawhi, Dion at 4 in 2012 instead of a useful player like Lillard, Barnes, or Drummond, and Bennett at 1 in 2013 instead of Oladipo....ah who am I kidding, they would have fucked up those dudes development anyway.  But those were the opportunities to acquire young talent to take the heavy load of Lebron and truly build a dynasty.

    Anthony Bennett being taken at #1 is Patient Zero of Cleveland having little to no assets left after that string of first round picks post-LBJ heading off to South Beach.

  4. 2 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

    That part of you should get some sleep.

    He did all he could.  Surrounded by a bunch of spares.

    Cleveland is dangerously close to having LBJ check out on this series.  If the Cavs are trailing at half in Game 3 and come out cold, he might just quit on the floor.

  5. 1 minute ago, Patrick Bateman said:

    JR is 2-16 from the field in the series thus far.  0-7 tonight and 0-7 from 3 in both games...... That's probably a frustration foul.

    No, it's a piece of shit foul.

     

  6. 5 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

      If you look at post time you will see Earnest and I were writing our posts at the same time, so I didn't see it.

     

      Boston HAS looked better this year. However, Boston looked better last year as well and got smoked in the playoffs 4-1. So many people are taking the wait and see approach.

    You really,  really can't compare Boston from last year to this.  They only have four (Horford, Smart, Brown and Rozier) players from that team remaining.

    Boston may still get the table ran on them, but it's not fair to say that this Celtics team will have the same result as last years team  when 4 of the 5 starters were either traded away or walked in free agency, and only 3 bench players remain.

  7. https://gizmodo.com/area-man-obscure-sidekick-asked-to-leave-google-fibers-1826028038

    Quote

    Conspiracy kingpin and Infowars huckster Alex Jones tried to “storm” the Google Fiber offices in Austin on Monday, which essentially entailed entering the building and babbling about a “big AI supermachine” before being asked to leave by Google Fiber staff and the police. Jones is well-known in the city as a sort of regional nuisance and sideshow curiosity, and so was immediately identified by an employee and asked to leave. However, staff do not seem to have recognized a bleached-blonde sidekick accompanying him.

    Jones streamed footage of the encounter to Periscope. Though Jones claimed on Twitter to have “stormed” the Google Fiber offices—perhaps a poor choice of words given Google subsidiary YouTube’s HQ recently went through a mass shooting—the video shows that this encounter mostly amounted to Jones bringing up the possibility Google is scheming in multiple dimensions and asking nonsensical questions like “Why is Google allowed to watch me at home, but I’m not allowed to come here? I know I’m just a human, not a big AI supermachine.”

    Also, at one point Jones rolled around on a wall of plants while yelling, “Oh, Google, I love you, ahh.”

    Quote

    Jones attempted to identify the individual with him as “Milo,” who a cursory scan suggests to be some sort of obscure quack remedy sales intern, to no avail.

    “I don’t keep up with this,” the staffer replied.

    Eventually, another Google Fiber staffer approached the duo as police arrived and quickly succeeded in escorting him out the front door.

    Jones may not have cracked the lid off of any Google conspiracies or successfully wasted more than a few minutes of police resources, but it was probably a welcome if brief distraction from the multiple ongoing lawsuits brought by people suing him and Infowars for allegedly defaming them as nefarious deep state agents or misidentifying them as mass shooting suspects. The mystery of who exactly his bumbling sidekick is, though, could ultimately be one of those unresolved questions that just slowly fade away into the dustbin of history. And you know what? Something tells us that’s probably for the best.

    Gizmodo has reached out to Google for comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.

     

    mildnb1wllgi06zj2m23.jpg

    • Like 1
  8. 21 minutes ago, burntorangebongos said:

    Trump Indonesia Project is part of the Lido City development in Jakarta and is the first to link the US president’s business interests to Beijing’s epic infrastructure plan.

    So, WTF? He is doing  personal business with China to the tune of 500 million, makes an abrupt change  and remove sanctions from  one Chinese company that is a national security concern This isn't bribery either, right? How is he doing this in the middle of an investigation? Fuuck. He is so greedy, he doesn't care if this fucks us hard. Is this not Treason?

     

    https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/01/15/577326163/after-a-year-in-office-questions-about-trumps-foreign-deals-go-on-and-on

    Quote

    Just before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20 2017, Trump tried to tackle the issues by holding a press conference. He promised he'd sign no new foreign deals while in office.

    In a show of good faith, he said he had just been offered a $2 billion deal to open a golf course in Dubai, "and I turned it down!"

     

     

  9. 5 minutes ago, JimTom said:

    I'm going to wear it in SF in a few weeks on a business trip and dare the libtards to hit me.  Thing is, they're all pu$$ies.

    Better to be a pussy than a thin skinned Trumpkin who wakes each morning scared shitless about the world changing around them, and they are powerless to stop it.

  10. Looks like Lue is going with TT in Game 2 in place of Korver.

    While that will help to neutralize Horford, it sure doesn't help the Cavs offensively.

    Stevens probably counters with Baynes to bang on Thompson.  Love probably will cover Baynes on defense.

  11. 3 minutes ago, JimTom said:

    Nope.  If you enter in promo code "intro10" you can get 10% off your purchase.  I also got a signed thumbs up poster go up in my office.

    What a deal.  Surely the hat was made in the US, right?  

    Or will it leave you conflicted if the hat was manufactured in China?

  12. What could possibly go wrong.

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/21/trump-vs-the-deep-state

    Quote

    While the Administration wrestled the civil service into submission, it began introducing Washington to Trump’s “best and most serious people.” He had four thousand jobs to fill, and the White House was determined to subvert the traditional ways of doing so.

    To vet candidates, the Obama campaign had used a questionnaire with sixty-three queries about employment, finances, writings, and social-media posts. The Trump team cut the number of questions to twenty-five, by dropping the requests for professional references and tax returns and removing items concerning loans, personal income, and real-estate holdings. The questionnaire was speckled with typos, and seemed carelessly put together. Robert Rizzi, a prominent lawyer who has helped with every transition since Bill Clinton took office, told me, “They would call it ‘the paperwork.’ We’d say, ‘Well, it takes months.’ They’d say, ‘Just to do paperwork?’ I’d say, ‘It has huge consequences if you do it wrong.’ ”

    The vetting was led by Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, who struck observers as keen to abbreviate the process. According to one lawyer, the transition sought “work-arounds”—ways that incoming officials could retain investments without breaking the laws against conflicts of interest. “If you look at them as technical rules that lawyers should be able to ‘get around,’ that gives you a whole different approach,” the lawyer told me. “It’s like tweeting after a couple of beers. It’s not going to end well.”

     

  13. 6 hours ago, Vic Mackey said:

    Since everything is fluid in life, I need to change my Cavs pick from 5 to 7. Might be knee jerk after one game as the Thunder looked terrible against the Spurs in game 1 in 2016 and then went on to kick their ass. But I underestimated the Celtics. They are damn good. I still think Lebron and the Cavs find a way to win this series but it will be going to the distance.

    When Aron Baynes looks more athletic and skilled than any Cavs big man, I'd say they they have issues.

    Looking at it from a different angle, aside from James, who from Cleveland's roster could move over to Boston and fill an immediate void.

    Cleveland may go ahead and win this series, but a day after the ass whipping, they look old, slow, and lacking motivation.  It was a similar look after Game 1 of the Pacers series, so we will see.  I like Boston's chances more than Indiana's.  

    • Like 1
  14. https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-aides-plan-to-stop-leaks-spy-on-his-co-workers

    Quote

    A former National Security Council official now working for Attorney General Jeff Sessions explored ways to surreptitiously monitor the communications of White House staff for leaks or perceived political disloyalty to Donald Trump, according to three former Trump NSC officials familiar with the effort. 

    Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn brought onto the NSC as senior director for intelligence, sought technical solutions in early 2017 for collecting and analyzing phone and other data on White House colleagues for interactions with reporters. He portrayed his desired leak hunt as an “insider threat” detection effort, according to the ex-officials. Those who heard of it presumed it would focus on NSC staffers held over from the Obama administration. 

    It is unknown whether Cohen-Watnick’s efforts actually resulted in any monitoring program. The former officials noted the overwhelming technical and legal hurdles to doing so. One called it “wholly inappropriate” for Cohen-Watnick, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, to do anything of the sort, considering it a blatant attempt at intimidating his colleagues. Another, who agreed the proposed effort was inappropriate, likened it to a “Keystone Cop thing.” 

    “This seemed designed to intimidate rather than protect national security,” said a different ex-NSC official familiar with the proposal.

    Quote

    Some staffers considered Cohen-Watnick’s insider-threat focus ironic, considering that Cohen-Watnick himself reportedly played a role in a Trump White House effort to leak intelligence reports to Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee chairman. Nunes then subsequently used the reports in a failed attempt to reinforce Trump’s baseless accusation that Barack Obama had placed his camp under surveillance. Cohen-Watnick’s attorney, Mark Zaid, has denied Cohen-Watnick’s involvement in the March 2017 “unmasking” Nunes episode.

    In a statement to The Daily Beast, Zaid said that Cohen-Watnick was involved in discussions about implementing a Barack Obama-era insider threat program, but denied that it either came to fruition or that discussions of it sprawled beyond protecting classified information.

    “Ezra worked along with numerous others within the NSC and IC [intelligence community] to facilitate implementation of the Obama Executive Order on insider threats that was issued in the wake of Edward Snowden's illegal theft and disclosures,” said Zaid, who also represents The Daily Beast, and this reporter specifically, in Freedom-of-Information-Act litigation.

     

  15. 13 minutes ago, PittsburghTiger said:

    I didn't see most of the game. What was the cause of Bron Bron's turnovers? Was he just throwing away passes? Or was he trying to back them down and the Cs slapping away the ball?

    DdHCih9U0AINJDg.jpg

  16. 1 minute ago, 4th&Five said:

    wut?

     

    So...tariffs are great. #MAGA.  But we need to help ZTE out because of.....why exactly?

    http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-china-trade-war-zte-shut-down-2018-5

    Quote

    President Donald Trump's crackdown on trade claimed a massive victim this week, as the Chinese tech giant ZTE shut down most of its operations. 

    The Commerce Department recently banned the sale of US-made parts to ZTE, crippling its operations and leading to a shutdown of its factories. In a statement Wednesday, ZTE said that "the major operating activities of the company have ceased." 

    ZTE, the second-largest telecom-equipment firm in China, pulled in almost $17 billion in revenue last year. 

    The department's move was the result of an investigation into ZTE's sales to North Korea and Iran that the US said violated existing sanctions against those countries.

     

  17. 5 hours ago, Machinator said:

    He should at least get a no-trade clause out of it.

    He can't.  

    Quote

    The NBA doesn't make it easy for players to have a no-trade clause included in their contracts. In order to get one, a player must have eight NBA seasons of experience and played for the team with which he is signing for at least four of them. If those conditions have been met, a no-trade clause can be negotiated into a new contract but not a contract extension.

    And:

    http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q101

    Quote

    A no-trade clause cannot be negotiated into an extension, unless player's existing contract or extension already contained a no-trade clause.

    Lastly, the Warriors declined to give Curry a no-trade clause in his last contract.  If he wasn't getting one, Thompson sure as hell isn't.

  18. So, it's plausible Cohen "convinced" a Pharma company to give him $1.2 million for insight, which he routed through a different company as partial payment to  a woman who had an abortion that presidential candidate (or hell, President?) Trump may have impregnated sometime in the past 1.5 years.

    If someone had written a movie script that contained a plot thread similar to that, it would have been trashed at a production meeting.

    What a time to be alive.  

  19. 21 minutes ago, kopp0e said:

    I think Boston can out coach Cleveland, but the Cavs can out athlete the Celtics... 

    Hmmm.

    Cleveland has the third oldest roster in the NBA.  Boston has the fifth youngest.  Now, that's not to say that there's no way Cleveland is going to win and a younger team = better team, but I'd like to think that Boston just might be a bit more athletic now than Cleveland is.

    A Tatum/Horford PnR against Love/Korver would make them look like they were on skates.

     

     

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