Is The Great Game Finding A(nother) Way? Saturday Night OT

 

Before getting into anything else, I wanted to make sure all Georgia voters know that at least right now  -- because Marc Elias & his team went to court on behalf of voters & democracy to make sure that despite what GA Secy of State Raffensberger said -- Georgians CAN vote early on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Right now.

Because Raffensberger (sp) et al plan to appeal the judge's decision (at least at this writing).

One of the cray cray things about this -- in an era when our quasi-public channels for reliable information are being obstructed by bigots & wanna-be fascists & autocrats  -- is not just that apparently that Secy of State (everybody remembers, the one whom Republicans and some Democrats hailed as a "hero" *just because* he followed the rules & did his job in 2020 & didn't give into pressure from a wanna-be mob boss) is going to appeal, but WHY they are going to -- which is because early voting would be truncated in part bc it conflicts with a "holiday" "honoring" Robert E Lee ... so you'll pardon me if I'm rolling my eyes HARD at the people who're literally trying to abridge the franchise in furtherance of democracy by prioritizing celebration of the Confederacy (as well as them who persist in denying that really is the order of some peoples' priorities who still hold power in this country).

But moving on to a sport I don't know anything about - I just wanted to recognize the opening of the World Cup, a sport that almost 2 billion people watch, is happening  on a weekend where one of the quasi-public communication squares where people worldwide ordinarily share joy & info about it is imploding, quite possibly on purpose 

So I wanted to share a newsletter on the Great Game from a publication I almost never read (David Frum was the first writer I read in it (and I was like "why" to myself before I discovered Adam Serwer and Clint Smith also wrote for it) because I know we have lots of fans here and the way they plan to profile the tournament does track with lots of other immediately relevant stuff we share here.

An introductory excerpt

Qatar hosting the soccer World Cup is like Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. It should not have happened, but the very fact that it has only exposes how bad things have become. Once this famous old tournament kicks off in Doha tomorrow, the fact that it did can never be unwound: Qatar will forever have been the host of the 22nd FIFA World Cup, the greatest absurdity in the history of the sport.

Carry on

Atlantic - Newsletters - The Great Game