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Or the org who traded for them, or signed them to a major or minor league contract, or picked them up off the waiver pile. I have long thought that just about any major league player could be an All-Star if they can luck their way into an organization that can unlock the top level of their skill. It’s not just the ability to find just the right tweak to unlock the skill—it’s also about communicating it to the player in a way he will embrace. He has to buy int the tweak and follow the program the team gives him Of course, the tweak itself has to be the thing that unlocks it. More than one thing has to go right for guys who aren’t tops in natural talent for it to happen. And even then, it doesn’t always last more than a year or two. See McKinstry, Zach, c. 2025.

Every time I think of Jim Bakker, I think of Tammy Faye Bakker. And every time I think of Tammy Faye Bakker, I think of this song.

Nobody else here cares about trans people, except that they be afforded the same constitutional rights as every other citizen of this country.

No reason at all to be sorry. I get the frustration some people here have with me on this. I would love to smoke the hopium but, like I say, I'm hard-wired to try to take in the whole landscape and how all the elements intersect with one another—at least as far as I can tell—and I sense that a lot of very smart people (not naming names) are setting aside the clearly-stated threats to the integrity of the election and behaving as though this will be an election like any other. It's not. It's different. We'd never heard a sitting federal government make overt threats against the electoral sovereignty of the states before. That should alarm everybody and raise the vigilance meter to eleven. And even though we as individual voters have no responsibility to respond to that, state governments do, and I know most know that. It's a pitched battle, and I'm hoping states win it, and I think there's a decent chance they will. But we'll see. In the end, we may be able to withstand the threats and achieve victory, including the final act of being seated, but I for one am not spiking the ball until we cross that goal line. FWIW, I feel heartened as well every time a poll strengthens for Democrats.

I wouldn't doubt that a lot of red hat voters in South Carolina are making a conscious decision to vote for Darline because, although they know she is embarrassingly unqualified on her merits, they calculate that she will do literally everything Trump and MAGA tell her to, which is fine with them and good reason to vote for her.

It's almost as though Trump is trying to lose the election for his team. I mean, who is he going to turn with this horrifying threat? Unless this is a ploy to goose turnout among people who hate us city folk, which, I guess we'll see whether it actually works.

And the guy got ratioed for it! Good!

Yeah, not too subtle, is it?

Something kind of weird happens in this video: at the point he mentions nuking LA and San Diego, you hear a distant smattering of applause and cheers, and then Trump's voice gets all echo-y as the cheering grows a little louder, and then his voice becomes clear again as cheering dies down. Meanwhile, the two kids behind him on the left start chuckling and a lady behind him on the right claps, but all the rest of them seem to be shifting uncomfortably and looking around as if to avoid engaging with his comment. I think his audio engineer shifted the focus to a certain part of the audience to amplify those cheers, making Trump's voice echo-y, in order to please his or her boss. In any event, I don't really hear or see a ringing endorsement of the comment. But he'll workshop it on the fly until he gets the response he wants.

I don't think the Tigers intended to be near the bottom of that list. I think that may be a consequence independent of their focus on controlling the plate. Of the fifty pitches the Tigers have drafted, Andrew Sears is the first, which makes sense, since very few pitchers make the majors within only a couple years of being drafted. I'm hoping Sears is still a rough lump of clay to work on, because he was rather lacking his first go round in the bigs. Someone else mentioned Drew Sommers sort of, although he was drafted by Tampa and spent two full years in their minors, so I'm not sure he qualifies as even sort of.

So weird how Florida has evolved to become out of reach for the Democrats. It was a legitimate purple state only a decade ago.

I could also post here if I choose, since I started this thread in the first place, and my posts are on topic. i totally believe that many more people will vote Democratic than Republican, and that in a free and fair election, Democrats would smoke Republicans off the field. That, I have never doubted. I also don’t doubt that because they see a literal existential threat looming, Trump and the Republicans will do everything within their power to subvert such a small-d democratic outcome, including declaring a national emergency to control local elections at the federal level, about which you may have heard. All due respect, anyone who is expecting that the Republicans are going to sit back and allow a free and fair election to throw them out of power, while cheerfully accepting that result, are simply not paying attention. I get why you might like all the posts here to be all sunshine and roses for a Democratic majority in both houses, and I promise you that’s what I want as well. But I’m also wired to look at things realistically, and not bull**** myself about the reality that Trump is throwing in our face every day: that, again, he will do everything within his power, legal or not (and probably preferring not, just to prove that he can) to subvert this election and maintain unchallenged power. And again I say, I will believe the Democrats have won once they are seated in their rightful place in Congress on January 3, and not before. if you want to start a thread for members who want to post only positive vibes about the election, you are, of course, certainly free to do so, and if you do, I promise you that I will stay out of that thread.

This is what Republican voters are voting for.

Wrong. It becomes Trump’s economy only once he can point to any successes. But any failures continuing through the end of his term will always be Biden’s fault, even when those failures occur at the same time the successes he takes credit for do.

They are ashamed of their predilection and are tacking hard against it in public to try to throw off the scent.