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Or he could just drop some bombs on Cuba

Granted.

Biden was the reason Obamacare got passed. Biden is the sole reason for Obama’s crowning achievement.

Harris was the cipher of a vice president that every modern VP outside of Cheney has been. Even J.D. Couch****er is a big zero as far as that goes, no matter how loud he becomes or how many news cycles he hijacks. There is almost nothing in their vice presidency a candidate can point to and say that makes them qualified to be president, and Harris was no exception.

This might be it.

That was a failure of the media. Harris was never the border czar as the media portrayed her. Harris was also put in charge of rallying support in Europe for Ukraine and leading the abortion issue. Not buying it. Biden himself was VP and in charge of passing Obamacare which was not popular at the time. He did fine until the party ran a coop on him.

We could be like the Braves last year where injuries derailed the season (about the same timing too) but they recovered this year (2028 for us). Or we could be the Orioles - who looked like a young contending team two years ago - but the management didn't bolster it and those young players crashed down to earth and they look like they are ready to start rebuilding again after a two-year run. I feel like we are the Orioles here.

I was thinking about what the cost to the person would be, and while I agree with everything you say here, I also believe that no major media organization would hire a loose cannon like that, so any person who does this would have to have the strength of their convictions that they could carve out a living in the self-publishing space (e.g., podcast, Substack).

Cleveland did pretty good on a few deals. I dont remember the details but I read an article a few months ago about some of their trades. But yeah, it's pretty rare to get talent back. Who would trade future All Star talent for a couple of months of an All Star pitcher?

Last I looked, Republicans still have a majority in both houses even after the primaries.

Been reading Mark Bowden's excellent "Hue 1968" and that MOP/MOE always comes up. One of the more interesting historical questions I came away with thus far: Walter Cronkite and Creighton Abrams had a conversation during Cronkite's visit to the Hue battlefield in which he came away and did his "war is unwinnable" report. Abrams was friends with Cronkite during WWII and Abrams had good press in comparison to the Westmoreland who was basically every French General during WW1 . Westmoreland sued CBS in the 1980s. I wonder if anyone did a more in-depth book on that Cronkite/Abrams relationship and its impact on the course of the War.

I still don't know. Recency bias says yeah, but the same group played at 100-game pace for a full season. The truth is probably between the two extremes. The problem is playing .500 ball or little better after getting healthy again won't get them to post-season this year.

May 22 https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/may-22?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2026-0522-05222026&om_rid=&~campaign=hist-tdih-2026-0522

name anything positive she got credit for. the highest profile issue Biden supposedly asked her to lead on was “the border” which was the single most toxic issue for the dems by the election. her 4 yrs as VP did her no favors in terms of building a positive political profile. was she bad at her job? did Biden sabotage her because he didn’t want her to have a strong argument for him not to run,? IDK, but VP did not turn out to be a very good gig for her. it’s really not a good spot to run from anyway, in recent decades VPs have lost more often than won.

I know a high percentage of people here are on board right now with selling Skubal, some of them believing so irrespective of how we do going forward. I have been opposed to this, and as a separate idea, I don’t think Harris and ilitch are going to sell, mainly because I don’t think that by the time late July rolls around, our record and prospects will be so bad that we will be forced in a sell-or-else situation. I think we’d have to have a W-L that’s far lower than it is even today, and playing in the most winnable division after having gotten most of the guys on the list back, we simply won’t be both this bad and this unlucky. That said, i would be open to selling if we do find ourselves in a situation that we don’t recover and we are something like .350 on the season on July whatever-teenth. The question becomes, who do you sell, and what do you hope to get back for them? You named six guys, and five of them were hurt this year (three on the list right now), and the sixth guy is in his late 60s. When I contemplate the possible return, the word “haul” does not show up anywhere in the results. If we want any possibility of a “haul” we would have to probably sell Riley high, plus Tork and Colt for potential and controllability, at minimum. Skubal, of course, but he will not return what everyone hopes, especially if he doesn’t come back Cy Young hard for at least a month. I don’t see how anyone else gets us anything else besides lottery tickets and throw-ins.

Even before the injuries they weren't exactly setting the world on fire this season, they were .500. I think we had a lucky stretch where McKinstry, Baez and a couple other players played way above their average and now they are literally crashing before our eyes. When Baez, Carpenter and Meadows come back - and they are still welll below .500 (which is what I think is going to happen), do they even consider changing managers? I just don't know why Hinch seems so untouchable. August 2024 - June 2025 looks more lucky than good now, doesn't it?

I think most of that list seems plausible to accurate. The dems should not be GOP lite to trans folks.

What was poor about her VP-ship?

the point about Harris having a poor VP-ship is absolutely true. The open question is “Why”. Did Biden not give her any high profile projects with easy wins because he wouldn’t or because she couldn’t? at this point the people who know probably aren’t saying.

I acknowledge I probably misunderstood you, as had I thought you were suggesting that “bad” free agent contracts (my quote marks, and open to personal interpretation) would stop if all the teams would just stop signing such players, which would require collusion; unless (again, as I misthought) you were suggesting each of the 30 teams could just decide on their own to stop signing such players by zeitgeist and the “bad” free agents contracts would just stop, which we both know would never happen. That would leave the question, knowing there will be some teams who will sign such “bad” contracts even as most teams never would, can a team who never does so compete just as effectively over the long term as teams who do sign such contracts? The first example that might fly into mind could be the Brewers, who seemingly win the NLC every year without a stratospheric payroll, but even they can’t be considered a team that never indulges in “bad” contracts, since they did sign Yelich to a 9/215 that has never looked really good since, and won’t for the next 2-2/3 seasons.

LOL now it’s Biden’s fault Harris failed? Was there anything about running a coop and throwing your incumbent nominee under the bus?

Democrats get held to normal standards and the GOP can be bat**** crazy. It's like siblings. The oldest one gets all the good grades, does charity work, well behaved. The youngest is a screwup but plays football and makes people laugh and gets girls so everybody gives them a pass. We just watched the movie Parenthood again last week and the dems are Steve Martin and the GOP is Tom Hulce. Always given a break, never has to be accountable.

Verlander was better than Flaherty last year. I agree he probably won't do anything this year, but I think you are exaggerating how hopeless he is.

i.e., body count in Vietnam

The US keeps trying to comfort itself over falling behind the rest of the developed world by every measure of quality (and quantity!) of life by clutching to productivity growth numbers, but Krugman has done an interesting series this month blowing up the idea that those numbers mean anything like what we think they do. When you use the wrong yard sticks, measure the wrong things, you tend to get bad outcomes.