UPinCarolina

I'm alive. Just been a torrent of things going on lately. Have found myself disconnected from the Foxes in the way that I would like to be. Any USA Foxes who are part of the Facebook group have been hearing from me though. See you good people tomorrow. Bright and early with a sniffer of Eagle Rare for the Red reckoning.

My working thesis for the rest of the season is that Castagne is the most important member of the Starting XI.

Son has been largely silent today. Credit where credit is due.

Maddison was robbed of a vintage, 2015-16 kind of goal.

Aurier's absolutely treated Fofana like it's the NFL.

We're jammy but none of this is inspiring any confidence.

That corner flag absolutely disintegrating into splinters when Vardy booted it was the best visual of the season so far.

I like the way that Nacho and Vardy play together, but I’m not sure that Perez shouldn’t feel slightly hard done by that substitution. Perez has been involved in nearly every positive move we’ve had today.

Our corner defending has become every bit as bad as it was two seasons ago.

What’s happened to Sheff? The stalwart defending they made their name on last season isn’t quite there. BUT WE FINALLY ARE

Bring back Iborra

Downright depressing, really. Now my Fulham supporting mate is blowing up my phone with texts. I don't need this on a Monday.

When he inevitably goes, I wish him all of the best. He's still young and has, hopefully, many years of top-flight football ahead of him. Just because we were not the club whose structure or needs were an ideal fit doesn't mean that he's necessarily not cut out for significant PL minutes. He's one of those in-between players who may never start 90 minutes on a regular basis but whose level is above the Championship.

It's too bad, but I suppose if it has to be someone it may well be Mendy. He's a massive factor in our season to date. I don't know if I'm out of pocket when I say this, but I think many of us had a horrid, sinking feeling when Ndidi first came up injured. Mendy has been very capable in that role.

May I present to you half of my country?

Kasper has been the MVP of the season so far. Where would be without him? Not looking at top of the table, that is for certain.

While those would be unpopular decisions with the foreign policy establishment I think they would go over very well with the American public.

Credit to the GK.

Great run by Justin.

Although it ended with a Fuchs shot wide, that was a very pleasing run of play. We're really moving the ball around well.

He can muck up the transition, he can pardon all sorts of nefarious people, perhaps even himself - he'll likely kick and scream in the courts and on Twitter. There's a good chance he'll keep holding rallies or events to drum up rage and resentment. The reality is that most Americans feel a private sense of relief that he's gone, even some that voted for him. People get sick and tired of dealing with the constant piquing of outrage in one way or another.

Pretty much every claim made in that piece, aside from the ones about the Trump administration working on a trade deal, is presented without any evidence at all to support it.

My fully conceived take about the election, which I have been mulling over most of the day (a portion of which I wrote out earlier in the thread): The Democratic Party, frankly, is too stupid to 'steal' a national election and get away with it - particularly when it was obvious (so obvious that even I predicted it) what the Republican strategy would be in this election. In addition, if they were really so smart as to be able to predict where and how to precisely sway the election, wouldn't they have at least won themselves the Senate or staved off seat losses in the House? Having the Executive Branch when you have a divided Legislative Branch doesn't do you a whole lot of good. **By any objective standard, this election was largely a massive failure for the Democratic Party establishment!** The Republicans were always going to take it to the courts, cast doubt on the veracity of mail-in or absentee ballots (but only in states where they're in danger of losing - says a lot that they went immediately to PA as things got tighter there, for example) and try and muddy the waters as much as possible, even if legitimate votes were cast out in the process. Trump telling the entire party NOT to cast mail-in or absentee ballots was only so he could later moan about them being overwhelmingly Democratic and raise the spectre of the Democrats 'stealing the election'. In addition, he's the most powerful man in the world, and he's been claiming but offering zero proof for literally months (and when he thought he would lose in 2016, he said the same thing) that the election would be rigged against him. He has all of the tools of the national Republican Party, the Federal Government, and three years of time to ensure that no chicanery or funny business could take place. Either he couldn't even do that adequately, thus making him a failure - or he's just a liar and a loser whose throwing a temper-tantrum and trying to incite his base. I'd like to believe that the Democrats were at least smart enough to realize that they couldn't continue to make any superfluous claims to moral superiority - and would absolutely self-own themselves - if they tried and were caught. Therefore, it's my belief that neither they nor the Republicans on a state or national level tried in any coordinated, concerted, or intentional way to cast impermissible ballots. Audit the whole election, in every swing state, and I'm confident the results will be essentially the same. It’s completely welcomed by me. It's telling that in every case that I am aware of, the Republican legal 'challenges' thus mounted have not been based on accusations of impropriety or have all been immediately thrown out due to lack of merit. Biden is going to be the POTUS come January 2021, and I believe that what we're all witnessing is the same disbelief that Clinton's supporters had to reckon with in 2016. At this point it's simply about planting doubt into the minds of his base, which in turn will fester and grow into something monstrous and profane down the road. Make no mistake about it, we're headed towards disunion in my lifetime as long as we put off necessary and transparent election *AND ECONOMIC* reforms - including the Electoral College - and restore collective belief in the importance of democratic principles. I fully believe that a large portion of this nation would gladly accept blatant oligarchy or even autocracy as long as their preferred religious or social beliefs were reflected by the people or person in power. (Side note: Without the inanities of the Electoral College system as presently constructed, there wouldn't even be the same opportunities for claims of fraudulence - because smatterings of votes here or there wouldn't be enough to sway a national election, and any attempt large enough to actually affect the outcome would require coordination and scale that would make it exponentially more likely to be caught.) Maybe I should be relieved that Trump will no longer hold executive power, but if anything I feel sick to my stomach because I believe his malignancy - and to be clear, he didn't create the conditions or beliefs that made him attractive, he just preyed on those inclined to believe him - will persist like a reoccurring, sometimes dormant cancer in the American electorate long after he's in the ground.

It's NOT easy to precisely manufacture hundreds of thousands of votes in exact yet fluid margins and not get caught.

I'm about 20 minutes from SC but they're nearly irredeemable down there so I have to stay on the superior side of the state line