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That sounds reasonable for certain types of employees, particularly individual contributors who don't have responsibility for anyone but themselves, but since I was a VP with direct reports and I was reporting to her, the SVP, that kind of passive aggression would not have worked for my circumstance. Plus, she would have sussed out and punished me for something like that in a millisecond, because group politics was her thing. It was all I could do to manage my people since she would routinely go around me to them for various things, not the least of which was drawing out unofficial feedback about me. I know this because, thank god, I had one guy loyal to me from a previous company we both worked for who clued me in to that. Since I knew she was on thin air in other areas, I just waited for the hammer to come down on her, which it did probably within a few months after that HR meeting. God, do I ever not miss that ****.

First of all, can I just tell you how happy I am you used "duct tape" instead of "duck tape", which drives me nuts? Secondly, other concerns I put forth earlier today set aside, I would hope that an Arenado pickup would see him at third instead of, as some national pundit posited, moved to first base since Arenado said he was open to that. I know we'd like to be rid of TORK!, but Arenado is not the answer to that. He's a plus third baseman and his value is greater there than at first, and his newly reduced stick plays even worse at first than third. So, my vote is no to that idea.

Yes. Well, that and HR works for them, not for you, so it's you they are trying to neuter and manage, not the bosses they are trying to protect from people like you.

I assume it's all a delicate negotiation, at least delicate for Senate Republicans, anyway. Trump doesn't need Gaetz to use Justice to run roughshod over Democrats, Hollywood, the media, and, eventually, everyday dissenters on message boards like you and me—he can do that through Pam Bondi just as effectively. But in a negotiation, if Trump gives them Gaetz, they have to give him Tulsi and Hesgeth and Patel and RFK. Trump holds practically all the cards, so he can design the trade exactly as he sees fit, and the result will still give him everything he was going to get in the first place. In any event, I still don't think Trump will ll subject his most odious appointments to Senate confirmation. It would create far less static to just appoint them in recess, or as merely acting directors, than to put them through the confirmation process and give Democrats and the few apostate Republicans a televised platform to appeal to the people every day for days on end. Appoint them as temps or in recess, weather a one-day news cycle, then spike the football and get to work.

No, in all seriousness, Trump made sweeping use of his own pardon power to help out his own friends and family, including Ivanka's father-in-law Charles Kushner, who he also just named ambassador to France. He also openly campaigned on pardoning people convicted for Jan. 6, which completely discredits the idea the pardon of Hunter give Trump whatever political cover he needs to issue controversial and even odious pardons himself. This fear of some Democrats is based on maintaining unilateral disarmament in which Trump fights dirty and wins while Dems respond as though they are trying to protect some precious notion of the norms of rules of engagement. That ship has not only sailed, it's in Augusta, Australia by now. Isn't it time for the scales to fall from their eyes and see the world for what it is now, not what they hope it is based on decades ago?

We've all been seeing the hair-on-fire responses by Democrats, fearing that the pardon will undercut faith in the U.S. justice system and give Trump the excuse he's been looking for to criticize and remake the Justice Department. But didn't Ttump and the red hats already have zero faith in the U.S. justice system anyway? And wasn't he already going to tear down the justice system and use it as his personal judge, jury, and execution force against political, media, and Hollywood enemies? So, Democrats, tell me: how does this pardon make that possibility worse? Exactly what's going to happen now under Ttump directly because of this pardon that wouldn't have happened anyway?

You know I'm not a slappy. Or maybe you don't know that. I don't know. But my choice to make the assumption is indeed a choice, an intellectual decision, not an instinctual emotional response. Maybe you don't believe that, either. Hell, I have no idea what you believe. 😝

Yes, the Tigers were in the playoffs. Some believe we overachieved on record based on our underlying elements. There's a good debate that could be had for that. Setting aside what I might like them to do, I would bet the front office believes that we have too many roster holes to fill to allow us to make the one big splash on the big-time free agent and push all the chips in to the middle and leave it all on the field in 2025 or bust. But, if that's where the front office thinks we are, I'll support it until it blows up in our faces.

It's not going to happen, unless they do that trick where they maintain harmful policy despite 80%+ opposition to it.

I could fear us going the Pirates/Rays/A's route, selling off good young players before they get expensive and replacing them with good cheap alternatives that keeps us in a 75-85-win loop indefinitely. But I have not seen any indication yet that this is what Harris-Ilitch are fixing to do, so I am going to assume they intend to build us into a perennial winner, until they prove otherwise. Yes, I recognize that assuming this, and expectations in general, are just a recipe for disappointment. Well, I'm ready to take that chance on this group. Speaking only for myself, I'm at the end of my life, so I feel as though I need to hope for something good for this franchise before the curtain falls, versus maintaining perpetual cynicism to the bitter end.

They'll just create new charges post-pardon and haul them in for those.

Exactly. The game on the field is merely the conduit for maximizing revenue, and can be radically modified to that end. And if a particular radical modification doesn’t work, they can employ additional radical modifications until they are satisfied they’ve achieved optimal profitability trajectory.

I can see us passing on Bregman this time because we have other holes to fill and/or the front office is calculating that we have enough to cover third base well enough going forward. They may also try to cover it with a trade for Arenado, which is getting a lot more Twitter buzz the past day or so. I’m not sure how I feel about a grizzled veteran parachuting into a group of underpaid kids in the same circumstance who are all getting along—after all, Arenado was getting mouthy in the media about how the kids were overrunning the Cardinals clubhouse—but he is a plus defender with pop in the stick who would put us on the hook for only 3/69, rather than 6+/pushing 200. It might depend as much on how any new player gels within the clubhouse and its culture for the next several seasons, as it does on how much the new guy can help us play into November in 2025 and we’ll figure out what happens after that.

It’s not about the game on the field. It’s about the stars in the promotional spots. That’s how they want to grow the game.

If Harris signs Alex Bregman, I am all in on that. If Harris does not sign Alex Bregman, I’m all in on that, too. That’s because my assumption is that the decision will be based strictly on whether Bregman is the best fit for us both right now and going forward, and that we won’t be signing him because we have to sign whatever big free agent we can so we can signal our arrival, or that we will forego signing him because Bregman’s perfect for us but Baby Doc simply doesn’t want to spend the money.