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I strongly disagree with automatic send on two outs.

Seriously, mother**** Joey Cora off this team already.

Only the math figures. 😉

High praise, my man! Although in my "defense", as it were, my English scores in the Iowa and California assessments tests in grade school were way up into the 90s with my math scores. It was the science portion that I face-planted on.

I have no idea how the Trumpublicans think they are going to square this circle enough to win a general election.

It's essentially bribe culture-lite.

Eighty-four wins, here we come!

Maybe? I'm not sure he even belongs on a good team. Kind of like Bobby Higginson.

Yeah, I am not looking forward to the narrative nature of the broadcast of a New York City team playing a flyover city team in upstate New York and presented by a broadcaster located in suburban New York City. A solid Skubal win could go a long way toward shoving that back up all their butts.

You and practically everyone else, a key reason general level of service quality has cratered in the past decade or so. If they get the same tip regardless, if you're trained to expect it as your due just for being there, what's the incentive to be nice to the customer, or even cordial? My buddy I referred to earlier gives tips approaching 30% regardless of the situation, whether it's someone serving him multiple rounds at a decent restaurant, or someone who merely opened the beer can for him at a ballpark grab-and-go. I mentioned to him once I found that interesting, in practically those exact words. He basically tip-shamed me in reply. That was the end of that conversation for good and ever. Do what you want, Dan, I'm still leaving a single dollar bill for the beer guy at Wrigley and that's it. All I will say here is that other countries have figured out how to have restaurant servers make a decent living without shaming customers into tipping them, instead baking their income into appropriate menu prices and paying them standard wages, and they all seem to like that just fine. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The woman sitting next to Kamala apparently can't believe her good fortune that she volunteered for phone bank for that shift.

Actually, I am interested in anyone Harris does pick up, even waiver claims. He has a type that works well with the on-field strategy we are putting in place and I think we are starting to see some successes from players we thought little of when they came on board, or even actively hated. I can’t think of any real whiffs he made on his pickups. Even the so-called “McStinky” has his moments, and at the very least is acting as an effective bridge from the old days to the playoff days. Believe me, if we had better major leaguers on board, “McStnky” wouldn’t be here. But this is all a process, and processes do take time.

I would be absolutely floored if Harris were to sign either Verlander or Scherzer.

Remember, Foley was an undrafted free agent, so he has already had a much better career than anyone could have imagined when Avila signed him in 2016. There’s a reason Foley went undrafted: he just never had shutdown stuff at a decently-high level. And he still doesn’t. He can’t strike out enough guys and keep enough batters from reaching base to be a backend bullpen piece for a playoff team. He’s a fingers-crossed “here you go, hit it and get yourself out” guy. He’s Mister Right now for this organization, and he has been very serviceable during his time here, but his ERA has always outperformed his FIP, and is that the kind of thing a team can plan success around?

Here’s what I don’t know: how closely do waiters/servers scrutinize customer tips and then discuss them with colleagues after the fact? How big a topic is this? I imagine “very closely” and “very big” are likely answers, but I don’t know, maybe not. Anybody here with personal experience in that?

I do generally go 20%-ish on $61 checks as well, although on very large checks at really nice places, like $200+, I tip a lot closer to 15% on the pre-tax amount. There’s a not-insubstantial difference between $30 and $45-plus.

I’m with you in principle, although if you have to tip before they make the food and they believe you’ve under-tipped them … 🙄

Maybe she gets dismissed by old-timey politicos because they think she looks like one of the hookers they used to bang up in Spanish Harlem when they were going to Columbia or King’s College back in the 70s and 80s. They are also disoriented because they expect someone who looks like her to talk like Sofia Vergara.

I don’t think AOC is any worse at “governance” than any other congressional rep with her level of experience. I do think she is more than smart enough to embrace the realpolitik needed to carefully craft her asks to get something close to what she in her heart wants, and I also think she is smart enough to become a respected party leader at some point. I hope to live long enough to see some evidence of this.

And in a situation where consumers won’t pay a company’s higher prices due to higher costs like taxes, the company may end up going out of business, which reduces the competitive landscape for that product category and tends to elevate prices as consumers have fewer choices. It is definitely a balancing game to allow for a virtuous balance between low-enough consumer prices and high-enough seller profits so that everyone feels as though they’re getting a pretty good deal, and government has to be the force that strives for that balance, doing so in the interest of the people, because the capitalist community definitely has no interest in low-enough consumer prices as the ultimate outcome.

Never mind explaining it to you. You understand it. Someone explain it to those poor saps sitting behind Trump waving those signs as he spools out that bonkers nonsense.

Just a reminder that if hostile foreign countries can and do so easily get kompromat on Trump, they can and will get kompromat on the deepest military secrets of the United States.

Some of you might remember me as the guy who started the thread "An Insidious Trend" on the MTS board, about tipping starting to run amok with the introduction of tip jars at restaurant takeouts. That was 15 years ago. When first I posted that, I was hammered by a few MTSers for being a grouch about tipping. Since then, I think most of us can agree that tipping culture has gone more or less nuts, especially with the swiveling iPad and the peering eyes watching what you're going to do. I hadn't thought through the Trump/Harris proposal regarding no taxes on tips, but Axios has, and what they say in their latest article about it seems to make sense: retail establishments and their employees humping you for tips is going to become more brazen and aggressive than it is even now. Tipping percentage has already exploded since it became so common. Some oldsters among us might remember 10% being the standard; I'm not so old, and I remember 15%. Nowadays, if you tip 15%, you're considered a ****ing asshole. You have to do 20%, minimum, and preferably more. A friend of mine judges me for giving less than 20%—he frequently goes 30% or more, which I have never understood. He thinks he's a hero. Who knows, maybe he is. But I seem to recall one of the reasons we are supposed to tip tipped workers in the first place is that they are paid far less than a living wage by their employers, and we the customers are supposed to make up the difference. There are all kinds of things wrong with that idea on its face, but setting that aside, now that Illinois is mandating that tipped workers be paid the same minimum wage of $15 as everyone else, I am playing with the idea of not tipping at all, which would make me an absolute pariah everywhere, including here, I guess. By the way: did you know that here in Illinois, employers may pay tipped workers as low as $9 an hour in wages, but must make up the difference to $15 if they are under-tipped? Or, more exactly, the way the law phrases it, "employers may take up to 40% credit for tips out of the employee’s wages." What this means is, if a tipped employee is paid $9/hour but gets no tips, the employer must make them whole to $15/hour. However, if the same employee is paid $9/hour and gets $6/hour in tips, the employer doesn't have to make them whole at all, but the employee gets the exact same hourly pay. In other words, for the first $6/hour, the customer is tipping not the employee, but the employer. Nice, huh? And I'll bet it works the same way in your state, too. And this doesn't even contemplate those pooled tipping jars which are certainly being skimmed or even outright stolen by certain employers. What do you think of tipping culture now? Anyhow, here's the Axios article in its entirety. Enjoy. What a "no taxes on tips" policy could mean for U.S. tipping culture Emily Peck If you think tipping culture is already out of hand, think about what would happen if workers no longer had to pay taxes on tips — something both Vice President Harris and former President Donald Trump are now proposing. Why it matters: Typically, ideas like these are tough to turn into reality, but next year when the Trump tax cuts expire, Congress will likely pass some kind of new tax bill. That creates an opportunity to put new policies in place, says Brendan Duke of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The big picture: A no-tax-on-tips policy would incentivize workers to push harder for more tips. And their employers would be into it, happy to shift the burden of wages onto customers. Businesses, then, would have every reason to figure out more ways to push customers to tip. Where it stands: You can't buy something to eat or drink in these times without getting asked for a gratuity, often by an iPad screen. "As pervasive as things seem now, I have to imagine that it will only get even more pervasive should this pass," says Ernie Tedeschi, of the Yale Budget Lab, who recently wrote an analysis of the policy. The intrigue: Where things start to get wild is outside the restaurant industry, as Americans try to figure out ways to classify more of their income as tips. Think bankers' bonuses or sales commissions — or even pay for a Substack writer or freelance podcaster. The U.S. tax code already has different rules for different kinds of income — capital gains, for example, are taxed at a lower rate than payroll income. When those kinds of divides happen, you create enormous incentives for people to game the system, says Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. Those kinds of shenanigans typically happen with higher earners — think of the carried interest tax loophole, for example. For the record: An official from the Harris campaign said the policy would include "strict requirements to prevent hedge fund managers and lawyers from structuring their compensation in ways to try to take advantage of the policy." Trump's campaign hasn't offered much in the way of detail. The bottom line: Knowing that tipped income isn't taxed, people might decide to give a little less money. "I'm a pretty religious 20% tipper," says Tedeschi, who until recently was chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "But, quite frankly if my dentist started asking me for tips, I would be like, 'hell no'." Eliminating taxes on tips would not likely have a huge impact on tipped workers. A lot of these workers don't make enough money to owe federal income tax, though estimates vary. By the numbers: More than a third of tipped workers, including those working in restaurants, barbers and bartenders — didn't pay income tax in 2022, per an analysis of tax data from the Current Population Survey from Ernie Tedeschi, at the Yale Budget Lab. He didn't account for tax credits, which can give some of these folks a negative tax rate — or lower their tax liability. A separate analysis from advocacy group One Fair Wage, looked at different government survey data that included self-reported income, narrowed in on restaurant workers and found that two-thirds don't pay income tax. These proposals would only help a very small slice of workers. Tedeschi estimates that last year roughly 4 million workers were in tipped occupations — 2.5% of all employment. On top of that, the Harris campaign tells Axios that, if elected, she'd work to craft a proposal that has an income limit — cutting the number of potential beneficiaries even more.

They are giving other players every opportunity to push Javy out the door.

As far as they're concerned, the USA is the only country blessed by God to rule the world, and if a woman is elected to rule the USA, we will have abandoned God, or something like that. Not even Israel is blessed because, you know, Golda Meir.