This morning, the Guardian has two stories about Former Guy that seem to go together, somehow. The first is about his latest Presidential bid, a bid, by the way, that is gaining steam despite all the talk from the right about moving on from the clown show. The second is about a book detailing some of the infighting regarding one of the many criminal investigations aimed at Former or his company.

Truth be told, I’m not sure what’s taking so long with these prosecutions. The evidence of his crimes seems overwhelming – unless you’re a con, of course. Then they have no idea what you’re talking about. But the people who understand things have already seen or heard much of the evidence against the guy. For example, if a recording existed of me calling the Secretary of State for Georgia and trying to strong-arm him into “finding” 11,781 more votes, I have high confidence the trial would, by now, be LONG behind me and I’d be sitting in jail serving my sentence. I still don’t think he’s going to jail, though I believe he should. But they should move forward with the prosecution.

I think the prosecutors are concerned he’s going to gin up his base to protest any prosecution. I don’t think that should be an impediment. Yeah, sure, the MAGA cons are going to scream. Hell, they ALWAYS scream. I know, January 6th demonstrated that – delusional or not – they can be an actual threat to safety. It has also shown that the law is ready to deal with the low-level perpetrators. Sadly, it’s also showing that the law is unable to deal with the high-level perpetrators, aka, the ringleaders. I STILL say this was a better country under the rule of law.

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File this under actions speak louder than words: Florida is working as hard as it can to limit access to voting. The state’s Governor, Rhonda Santis…no, that’s a drag queen name…he’s Ron DeSantis, has made voting by mail harder First, hundreds of thousands of people who had requested absentee ballots had their requests summarily cancelled. They’ll have to re-register and some percentage of them won’t know they were cancelled in time to get it done. He has also limited access to drop-off points. According to the article I read, “Republicans enacted the measure even though Florida regularly earns praise for having well-run elections and saw no major problems with voting in 2020. Voting by mail is popular in the state – about a third of voters used it in the 2022 general election.”

In short, DeSantis has “fixed” a problem that doesn’t exist. No, that’s not right. There IS a problem: most people won’t vote Republican these days because the party has collectively lost it’s mind. The ONLY way for Republicans to have a chance in any election is to limit the number of people who vote. THAT’S the “problem” DeSantis is addressing. Sure, they could try reasonable policies. That might work, too. But they’re not going to do that. They’ve got a “culture war” to fight and this is the only way they can think of to fight it.

I’ll tell you this: limiting access to voting is unamerican and anti-democratic (and definitely anti-Democratic…)

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Oh, those poor Niners. Listen, I don’t care which team you are or which team you’re playing, no team can win an NFL game without a Quarterback. The game was quite disappointing, not so much because my preferred team “lost” – though there was that, too – but because they never really got a chance to play the game. The only thing I saw that might be called a mistake was Shanahan’s apparent failure to scheme against Haason Reddick. He’s an outside linebacker. He plays for the Eagles. He’s a freaking machine, far and away, one of the best players to ever play the position. Maybe THE best, but he’ll have to keep it up for awhile to earn that title.

The standard blocking scheme against a guy like that is exactly what Shanahan pointed to after the game: you have a Tight End block him – or try to. The problem is, any game film Shanahan watched (and I’d guess he watched a LOT) shows that the standard scheme just doesn’t work with that guy. Now, nobody found an answer for Reddick all season long so it’s not really fair to point out that Shanahan didn’t, either. But I never saw a double-team on him. I would have liked to see someone stay in the backfield with the Quarterback specifically to help block that guy. The trade-off is one less option at receiver but my position is that more receivers downfield are useless if the QB is on his back all day – or worse, as Niner fans discovered. (I expect Andy Reid, Kansas City’s Head Coach, will have a double team scheme for Reddick in the Stupid Bowl.) (If I use the real name of the game, the NFL expects payment…)

I also think Shanahan should have thrown the challenge flag on that fourth down not-a-catch. Kyle’s after game comment is true and fair: he didn’t seen the angle that proved it was not a catch until it was too late. Even the fact that there was a Niner player right there who immediately turned to his coach and told him it wasn’t a catch is not really enough. Players do that all the time. If a coach listened to every player to made a claim about a play, he’d likely be out of challenges and timeouts halfway through the first quarter. But in addition to his own player telling him it wasn’t a catch, the supposed catcher, DeVonta Smith, immediately told his teammates to snap the ball fast – precluding a review. Those two bits together should have been a sign. Smith knew he hadn’t caught the ball. Shanahan later said he didn’t want to give up the timeout and I get that. You don’t want to let the other team steal a timeout from you. But, instead, they stole a Touchdown. And we ALL know, now, that the challenge would have been successful and the team would NOT have lost a timeout.

But ALL of that is unfair. Shanahan’s logic was sound, though mistaken. There’s ALWAYS this fact: Kyle Shanahan was making decisions, real time, with less information than I had. I had several days to come to my conclusions. He had to do it right now, in the moment. I’d bet that if it ever comes up again, he’ll throw the flag.

Also, I think complaining about how the NFC Championship game played out is typical Niner-fan whining. Under any circumstance, a team relying on their third string QB should never even have BEEN in that game. When the starter went down for the season, it could have been a disaster. It was only a curious string of events that caused them to still have access to last year’s starter to come in and take over. When HE went down for the season, the Niners were forced to use their third stringer – who would have been the second stringer except for the previously mentioned curious string of events.

When they brought in their third stringer, I was pretty sure their season was over. It should have been. In just about any other situation, it would have been. Apparently, NOBODY expected to discover that, in fact, Brock Purdy is the best Quarterback on the roster. (That’s a different question: How come nobody knew what they had?) So we got more from our boys in crimson and gold than we had a right to. After Purdy went down, Josh Johnson came in and did the best he could for as long as he could but the Niners were now, decidedly, in the no-Quarterback situation. When Johnson went down and Purdy was sent back in – limited to hand-offs – the game was over. Everybody just had to wait out the clock and it was ugly and hard to watch.

But, as I indicated, we got a far better season from them than we had a right to expect and, if not for a series of unfortunate events, might well be looking at the Big Game. Sure, other teams are going to poach our coaches and players but I still trust the leadership team of Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch to make the best choices going forward, and quibbling that the Niners didn’t have one more miracle in their pockets is a kind of luxury that goes with such a successful team.

I’m looking forward to next season…