gehringer_2

NYT with a story about Iran evacuating IRC/Quds personnel from Syria under a resurgence of the rebel forces there, with the Syrian government forces rapidly losing control of geography and Iran deciding it can't make a difference if Assad's forces are unable to stand up. The Ukraine war reducing Russia's ability to project external power, Israel's dismemberment of Hamas and Hezbollah have created space for Syrian rebel forces to gain momentum. That's the one sure thing about the ME, while everybody is watching one thing, the action will emerge somewhere else. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/world/middleeast/iran-syria-evacuation.html

House members know they will get blamed for cuts and they operate on short elections cycles. Traditionally there is a fire bomb throwing caucus in the House that makes a lot of noise (could be on either side at any given time) but in the end the body usually ends up pretty conservative (small 'C') about upsetting the status quo apple cart - as in this last session where all the noise was from the freedom caucus but almost all the important outcomes were middle majority with 'regular' Repubs voting with the Dems. The political reality is that small aggrieved voting blocks can swing mid-term elections and change always aggrieves someone. It's why the midterms are always dangerous to the 'ins'. Who knows, that could change, but unless he really does plan a coup, every day in office Trump losses political leverage as a laming duck.

the system had been uneven for a long time. My BIL is career retired and he swears by his local VA. You can either try to make it better or move people out of it. The original rationale that that vets would present a different cross-section of medical issues (particularly disability rehab, PTSD etc,) that a specialized service would do better in. That probably not a bad idea, but like anything else institutional, the results no doubt vary.

Scarborough has never been a serious person. He's another of the breed that is best named 'political entertainer.' That's been a big growth industry since the rise of cable and sadly the public often seems to take it as an actual credential when that type runs for office.

UM has just upped the family income limit for in state students to receive free tuition to $125K. That has more potential to increase diversity at the U than most of the money spent on additional internal DEI staffing.

Don't tell Buddha, but Warde Manuel's contract has been extended through 2030

Now we're getting somewhere.

that was a pretty poor play, no doubt.

Idk, do you really want everybody to have all your transaction data?Not sure I’d be in for that. Of course that isn’t what your getting with crypto. The block chain may be in a public domain, but the transactions are not transparent in any way, which is what makes it useful for illicit purposes.

fair enough.

just note - this was brought to you by a Democratic dominated board of Regents. The looney left is mostly in the Democratic Party, but is not the Democratic Party. I would guess the Regents will demand more paring, not at all on philosophical grounds, but simply on economic terms. The programs cannot demonstrate their effectiveness at increasing diversity in the student body and they are costing a ton of money. There still a performance ethic at most Universities that trumps most everything else in the end. The important program is the scholarship system, and I don't think that is at risk.

by the eye test, Keith looked OK, definitely makes a good quick accurate DP turn. BR didn't like his fielding at all, Statcast rated him even, pretty large disagreement there. He's a big body and if he gets any bigger third might be the more natural fit range wise, but we don't know the medicals on his arm.

always fun to go into a season with 3 of 4 IFs having no track record and the 4th having one you'd rather he didn't.

and the convenient thing about hanging is that all you really need is the rope - the gallows is quite optional. I doubt many lynchings failed for lack of being able to find something to throw a rope over.

no 1B glove at least until he hits his 1st MLB HR.

Interesting approach. Gets away from trying to definne 'gender' and specific genetic categorization. We'll see if it flies.

One thing I haven't heard (is it out there anywhere?) is how much of a haircut, if any, the Tigers took on their TV deal in the Diamond bankruptcy. Hard to believe that it could have been anything but a cut. Was it or more or less than the Tigers had already anticipated? Enough to crimp spending plans or not?

Cade is one of the guys for whom "a legend in his own mind" is the perfect description.

Oil isn't going away - that's simplistic thinking, which both sides engage in because both are mostly economically and/or technically ignorant. The question is how much oil is needed. Sure, the whole world stops without lubricants but you can make all the lubricants the world needs with a tiny % of current oil consumption. We didn't kill all the horses because we started driving cars. There will be be things that still need oil, but most cars won't and cars are about 70% of today's oil market.

I tend to see it the opposite way. And I think he just shot himself in the foot. IMHO this is because he knows the party is going to fall in line behind Benson so he has no shot there anyway. If he does mount any kind of independent campaign the end result will be a repub getting elected. (EDIT just saw you said the this in another thread) f*** him indeed.

Maybe, maybe not, but pitchers also want to stay in rhythm. It was hitters that were responsible for slowing the game down and forcing the 'pitch clock' -- which is a misdirection name because it's been the requirement that hitters get in the box that has made the change. There were always a few pitchers that worked slow - Benoit for instance, but most ended up waiting for the batter most of the time.

This. The real reason the illegals have been allowed to stay is that the business community knows removing them will drive up wages everywhere. The employers of illegals wail that Americans won't do the work implying that they are too lazy, but the truth is not that they are lazy, it's that being legal, they have choices. You will have to pay enough to make it a better choice to get legal workers out in those fields and into those hotels and construction jobs and American business doesn't like that idea one bit.

Of course this is an overstatement, but there is an interesting tension dynamic going on inside liberalism. American Jews have generally comprised a chunk of liberal leadership, and have been in the vanguard of previous progressive movements, but the recent turn of a section of the progressive movement to victimology has been leveraged by the Arab American community to take the movement into anti-semitism, and interestingly, the old guard leadership is now pushing back. We have old traditional Jewish liberal regents at UM, people that would in the past have been considered progressives, pushing the 'U' back toward the mainstream, and the 20% of the faculty that comprise this new style victimology wing are screaming bloody murder.

LOL - this is GM you are talking about - a company that hasn't failed to bet wrong once in the last 40 years. I think I'll start a tracker on GM vs LGES and see which one goes up more in the next 5yrs.......

C'mon, CMR - who needs fruits and veggies, don't they call come from the left coast anyway? We don't care about those farmers, they don't have enough votes to carry their states. Nope - You can have beans and bread on weekdays and beans and corn on weekends, and you'll get fat and happy.