gehringer_2

the thing I worry about with Iran is along the lines of MB's post above. The regime has been pushed hard before by protest and absorbed the blow pretty easily. One of the things in the West is that like Iraq before the war, we see mostly the Iranians who want what we want. The western press is always looking for the protestors. But once you get outside Teheran, how deeply conservative is the rest of the population? We don't know because we don't see/hear from them. It would be tragic if it turns out the parallel to Afghanistan holds, where the real problem for all those westernized people in Kabul was less our perfidy than the fact that a huge portion of the countryside actually does want to live in the 7th century. I hope you are right, but with no US boots on the ground to take physical control of the levers of power and then hand them to the right people, it's still looks like a crap shoot to me. Which is definitely not saying I want US boots on the ground there.

TBF, you don't have same civil war potential in Iran as in Iraq because 'liberation' in Iran will not mean an armed and previously dominant minority ethnic group is going to be deposed and is going to fight to the the death to hold on. That said, in that part of the world, anything that can go sideways usually does. How deep and hard to dislodge will the power structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran turn out to be? It is as thin as Suprme leaders clique or does it have the ability to reconstitute itself? It's had a long time to get entrenched. But's it's also ticked off almost all the Iranians - at least that is the impression we have in the West.

Celebration is good, but someone better start figuring out how to disarm the IRG, or this could all be short lived.

GHWB and Schwartzkopf

Ex-Congresswoman. Tweets are cheap ego massage. If she had at least hung around she might have done some good voting against him.

the story is on Reuters now and the name are public. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/first-brands-nears-bankruptcy-settlement-tees-up-business-unit-sales-2026-02-27/ Sounds like there might be a chance Ford steps in to straighten it out. That would probably be the best outcome for the employees, but it's not like FoMoCo doesn't have enough problems of it's own either.

turn the question around. If they don't keep Duren, who can fill the void he leaves behind that they either have, or can get? Duren's not a perfect player but I always get a sense of 'the grass is greener' going on in the dissatisfaction level over him. Mitchell may not have been playing but Duren was making a guy that had led the league in the past in DWS look like a child. I get that maxing any player is a tough call, but to me that decision is more about whether the team can afford two maxes in general, less about whether Duren could be one.

If you believe the current activity will be sustained for sure. However I'm doubtful it will be, but who knows?

unless you have at least 2 middles names and German heritage general.

someday there really must be a picture of DJT with the dictionary definition of projection. He is the most transparent individual I can ever remember reaching any kind of political power. Every accusation he has ever made about anyone else has been a predictor/admission of his own conduct.

there were lots of turning point for the GOP. If the other Bush brother had pushed his brother aside it would be a whole different history as well.

And it's the self fulfilling death spiral. The way they are operating they aren't making any money, so some vulture like Bain dismembers it all and walks away a little cash but the all the people are SOL. The vulture's ledger books say in the end it was all good, but society gets left with all those 'externalities' like broken towns and broken people that neither the vultures nor the big campaign contributors are obligated to do any accounting for.

good DAY. It's just an idiomatic abbreviation. In modern English "have a nice nice/good day" has gotten to sounding hackneyed, or worse is said satirically so often you risk people taking you wrong. I volunteer accepting donations from people, you do want to send them off with some positive good-bye, I find I tend to use every combination just to avoid sounding stale to myself. And you try to match the audience. "Have a good one" for the guys in the F150's, "Have a nice day" for the 30 something professional women, "Take care" for the oldsters....🤷‍♀️

I think today, a Spring training report of 'dead arm' doesn't send up too many rockets, but 'forearm' anything is never good to hear.

Post of the day.

Spent any time in Houston? I can see why business likes it, but QOL sucks. SIL is near San Antonio, seems to be a more reasonable place to actually live. No experience with the Dallas area.

I'm waiting to see if he has changed his stance at all. He could not get to strikes at the bottom of the zone last season so I'll be less pessimistic if we see an attempt at a setup change.

Yankees only on the hook for $64M. 🙄

when they played Atlanta you virtually couldn't tell the teams apart. I assume they won't do anything that dumb in the regular season but who can be sure anymore?

Talk about a play were it looked like there was nothing there. Face off was not a clean win, Raymond wasn't really open for the pass, then Lucas with a pass into empty space with his best guess to where Larkin could get and finally Larks having to execute with hardly a millisecond to spare before he was going to be in too far. Not too shabby.

One the plus side, this is kind of thing the Ilitch org is generally really good at making right for guys.

Deferred maintenance because margins are too thin? One step from there to injuries and shutdowns. I don't know how many times I had the conversation with a suit. "You are telling me it's going to fail - will it be tomorrow?" If I couldn't given him a statistically derived proof that it was he didn't care, and when most of the specialized equipment in the plant are "One-of" being run in ways they were never run before, there is no such thing as those kinds of statistics. So they run till they don't, and for want a day or two to do maintenance, you lose the whole operation for who knows how long. The maintenance guys go to 12hr shifts and everyone else goes home. ....And the tech staff gets blamed anyway!

Darkness is the thing because you can't see the horizon. When we spent time on the lake, you always wanted to see the horizon when the boat was pitching because if what your eyes see matches what your ears (otoliths) say you have half a chance. Same thing with reading in a car. Look out the window while driving, most people are fine. Give you kids a book or game for the back seat which has them looking down and they are tossing their cookies in no time. I'm usually pretty resistant to motion sickness at sea but I never try to read while riding in a moving car for more than a minute or two. Oddly, the SO can read in the car but doesn't do too well in boats.

This reminds me that when we spent time on lake superior on a boat, the soda crackers were always on hand to help with seasickness. Bland starches are the thing I guess.

Great. They'll rest Cade and watch the league decide the Pistons are the team they are going to hammer for it to make an example...