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I wrote to John James requesting he provide me five things he's accomplished since becoming a congressman.

You don't know ****. I worked along side government employees for 11 years. Most of them work hard and very few of them are getting wealthy. Why all the hate? Why are you celebrating the loss of jobs? You sound like an asshole.

We ran into some guy that does Tigers radio while waiting to get in to the park this morning.

Cults were a lot harder to join when you needed to drink some poison Kool Aid and show up on a farm in Ohio, not spend a couple hours on Youtube and listen to a Joe Rogan episode.

Governments are not intended to run like businesses. Governments exist to provide services that are essential but not profitable. Governments are also responsible for the social welfare of its residents. Democratic governments do not exist to enrich billionaires. Having two really ****ty business people, both of whom having inherited their money from their fathers, or stolen from their partners, is a horrible way to run a government

Nevertheless, why not

Guess how your daughter's asthma treatment was developed and funded. I'll wait. If you had no one else in your life that cared that you were struggling, that speaks volumes.

Management styles and methods are all over the map in big businesses. Some places are a bitch to work for, some aren't. But it's certainly NOT unusual for management in an organization to not understand who is providing the value added in their org. At one point UM spent a 7 figure consulting contract with the firm that used to be Arthur Anderson. They came around and did survey and time studies. A lot of people got their task time audited. The conclusion they came up with was to centralize purchasing across the all the research departments (with lower cost clerks of course). A couple of hundred people were given notice they would be let go. Of course the faculty was asleep at the wheel all the time this was going on or they probably could have saved a lot of trauma. In any case, once the plan was announced, all the people that knew better informed TPTB that commissioned the study that department purchasers were basically all specialists in various arcane technologies and supply chains and if you tried to centralize purchasing, what you would end up with would be faculty members (the most expensive employees in the org) spending all their time hand-holding purchasers who had no clue what they were trying to buy. Plan was called off, money was wasted, but it did grease the skids for at least one high ranking administrator's exit. Stupid episode but indicative of the fact that you even if you pay a lot of money supposedly to analyze what your org is doing, it's no substitute for management that understands its org in the first place.

But seriously you and all your fellow ****ing idiots could use some education on how hard working and thankless the jobs a supermajority of federal employees are. **** you and anybody parroting this line.

I don't know if anybody posted this yesterday. I forgot to and was running errands. That was a massive failure on my part and I am sorry. “Lo, the Winter's passed, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the Earth, the time for the singing of birds has come. And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

Didn't you choose to leave here, but lied about it and then came crawling back?

People aren't choosing to leave. And finding an available job where you want to work is very difficult. People spend months looking for a job while trying to stay afloat, they work hard at their job and then they get fired. And then some asshole celebrates their loss.

I notice really slipshod audio, and other things happening when I watch cycling races on Peacock. I get the feeling that somebody with connections got their kid to job as an unpaid intern and they don’t know what they’re doing. Last year for an eight day race, for the first seven days, they had an obvious misspelling on the opening graphics of one of the two major announcers for the first seven days and it’s like nobody cared enough to change it and I’m sure it was mentioned to them. There’s a lot of slave ship stuff going on with these big companies and they don’t care.

· Perform · Other · Duties · As · Assigned

And they often blame people who a, took the time and initiative to become educated and get a government job (often for less money), b, have benefits that they wish they had and think if they don't have them nobody should, and c, are people of color, women, or members of other groups.

The rest of the workforce is treated like this but his example is from the 90s. Asshattery.

DOGE is such a scam. It’s so obvious how this will play out. Trillions of dollars in government jobs will be eliminated and outsourced to the private sector. They will end up paying out even more money and costing far more than they claimed to have saved by eliminating government waste. Elon and Trump will hand select which organizations get these no bid deals. In many cases, brand new companies will be formed by Trumps pals and gifted a multi billion dollar industry just like Putin did with his oligarch pals.

Dan Dickerson announcing Tiger baseball on a brisk late-October evening.

I was thinking about this thread idea as a bin for things that people are seeing and doing to raise awareness of the monstrous wrecking of our Democracy underway from Trump. I was inspired to this by my elderly father and his very small group of church friends writing hard copy letters to their GOP representative out in west Michigan. So, not all of us have his credentials of Korean War veteran/GOP for life until 2015 but we can do a lot. Organizing and protesting in the ways we can while we still have speech.

And working the radio booth! He’s a double threat.

I'm also asking my Congress Critter (Paid for by Newport News Shipbuilding) for a 5 point bullet summary of what he's done for residents not in that tiny area of his district

Solid couple of innings for Casey.

Ok and which player are the cubs gonna cut to keep him, one of the free agents they signed this offseason or their top prospect?

You made a good pitch, but…. … it got crushed over the wall.

I have met him. He seems like a very genuine person who knows how to talk to people.

That was the outcome of World War 2 for sure. All those GIs came home and got educated!!! God damn those college boys! Plus insert all the other reasons why stopping a globe-menacing dictator is a good idea. Use short words because some of us are thick.

I think that number (b) point is an especial sore point for them. They may or may not be aware how much less government employees make than people int he private sector do, but when they hear anything about health benefits or 403(b) plan participation for taxpayer-funded government employees, those red hats see red.

Words can't describe how angry holic's drivel is making me...

It's not personal with you because it's not happening to you. And I do not believe shrinking the government is the goal of the people in charge.

no one here has had real workforce jobs except magalolic so if you all could just let the one with experience talk that would be nice

many games where they never set a decent a balance between crowd and announcer mics, games where one announcer was markedly louder than the other, games with clipped mics like today. Too often get the impression someone set board and went to play video games for two hours.

This is the fulcrum.

I personally haven't experienced that, but I appreciate your experience. Given your own personal experiences, and how you likely felt when you received that email, why do you take so much joy in others receiving that email in this instance?

Liberal Americans are the problem but you have no issues siding with Putin and Xi.

It’s so insulting. So many hard working, non partisan people for no other reason than having federal jobs.

For as much as these guys talk about running their government like a business, I've never seen an email like that at all in my professional career. Probably because it would be terrible for business to send an email like that

I copied this from the Auschwitz Memorial Facebook page: 22 February 1943 | Sophie and Hans Scholl & Christoph Probs were executed by guillotine in Germany for their public resistance against the Nazi regime. They were members of White Rose movement called for active opposition to the Nazi party. Hans, a medical student at the University of Munich, was 24. Sophie, a student of biology and philosophy, was 21. Christoph, a medical student, was 22. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942, and ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943. At great risk, the White Rose group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. In total, the they authored six leaflets, which were multiplied and spread, in a total of about 15,000 copies. They denounced the Nazi regime's crimes and oppression, and called for resistance. In their second leaflet, they openly denounced the persecution and mass murder of the Jews. In their attempt to stop the war effort, they advocated the sabotage of the armaments industry. “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!" "For Hitler and his followers there is no punishment on this Earth commensurate with their crimes. But out of love for coming generations we must make an example after the conclusion of the war, so that no one will ever again have the slightest urge to try a similar action" - a fragment of the fourth leaflet.

Somebody let the Tigers get hot!

The war is between Trump’s ego and the belief that he’s an incredible businessman and intelligent leader versus the reality that he’s a con man working for Putin and Elon.

LOL Trying to compare Trump to Lincoln. That is some "For you" level MAGA there.

What's better than Dan Dickerson announcing Tiger baseball on a sunny Saturday afternoon? I'm surprised Pena is on the radio.

F*ck cancer.

I've been on a weird kick lately. Probably starting a few months back starting with a James McBride interview at the National Book Fair in the fall. Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Five Carat Soul, The Good Lord Bird, I still want to read Miracle at St Anna when it becomes available at my local library or on Libby. Meanwhile thanks to a recent history podcast I occasionally follow I've started The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.

I read 44 books in 2024. Of these, 30 were non-fiction, 14 were fiction. Also of the 44, men wrote 30 of them, women wrote 14 of them. I read almost exclusively on Kindle these days and did a purge/donation of most of my print books a few years ago. So while I don't really have a physical library, I do keep track on a spreadsheet the title and author of each book I read and have done so since 2009. Some of my favorites from 2024, in no particular order: Non-Fiction Endurance - Alfred Lansing (classic about doomed Antarctic expedition a century ago; one of the few books I've ever re-read, which I do every decade or so) A Walk in the Park - Kevin Fedarko (Grand Canyon adventure) Destiny Disrupted - Tamin Ansary (history from an Islamic perspective) How The Word Is Passed - Clint Smith (essays on race/slavery by visiting various sites with historical or modern significance) To The Field Of Stars - Kevin Codd (on walking Spain's Camino de Santiago, which I did this September) Why We Love Baseball - Joe Posnanski (considers dozens of moments and personalities over time, some familiar, some not so familiar) The Teachers - Alexandra Robbins (an educator's perspective on the challenges and rewards of the profession) Revelation For Normal People - Robyn Whitaker (making sense of the final book of the New Testament) Fiction Normal People - Sally Rooney (about two Irish teens growing into adulthood together and apart, made into a BBC TV series available on Hulu) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (English aristocracy a century ago, made into a TV series in the '80s) Kindred - Octavia Butler (late 20th century black woman who time travels back and forth between the South of the early 1800s and today) A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles (Count returns to Russia around 1918, lives under house arrest in a hotel for the next quarter-century or so) Margo's Got Money Troubles - Rufi Thorpe (fun; a single mom who was the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler; turns to OnlyFans to make a living)