chasfh

If we lost this game literally every time, then Trump would have won in 2020, the Trump Party would have super-majorities in the House and Senate from electoral routs in 2018, 2020, and 2022, and this country would be done for right now, at this minute.

You're right, many people aren't interested in facts and truth. But a lot of people are, including independents and fence-sitters. So just throwing up our hands and giving up on trying is not an option.

This cannot be stressed enough. This is not the way a statesman should be talking. At all. Ever. Not even in private conversations. This is related to when Trump said he would be a dictator on day one, for one day only. Or when he suggested injecting Americans with cleaning agents like bleach to kill the COVID virus. Or when he mislabeled the Nobel Prize as the "Noble Prize". Or when he said he can grab them by the pussy and get away with it. Or when he said that Russia should release emails he suggested it had stolen from Hillary Clinton’s private email server. All said very seriously, even earnestly. Then when he was called on each of these, he employed some variation of the "I was just joking" defense. Nobody at his level should be allowed to joke about any of this. he's not a private citizen anymore. he's a public figure, always, 24/7, and by choice. He tries to get it both ways, and his acolytes will allow him to. We cannot follow suit.

I assume that would never make the MAGA news. Someone had to give a multi-billionaire money to make bond? That's fake news. Then, if they were to find out it's not fake news, they pivot and say, that's what make him the greatest businessman in history. He got someone else to bankroll him and he didn't have to pay a penny of his own multibillion-dollar fortune for this unconstitutional deep-state shakedown. Genius!

Does it have to be Elon or foreign government? 😏

There are a lot of things that could possibly happen next. I think declaring bankruptcy is a non-starter because that might actually hurt Trump’s standing in red hats’ eyes. Same could be said of his selling substantial and visible chunks of his real estate portfolio, like Trump Tower—that would be a bad look. His unerring business sense and his billionaireship, or something along those lines, are a central part of his appeal. If it turns out he’s broke, then what is he, really? Although red hats may be so far gone on him, even that might not make a difference. I think a rich benefactor is still solidly in the picture, and someone no one has ever heard of could swoop in with money for his bond, although if Engeron really does have the power to reject the bond due to sourcing, the benefactor would need so many layers between them and a foreign government that no one could vet that in time to decide on the bond, and Engeron just accepts it with some vagueness still attached to it. I doubt Engeron will start seizing assets, especially Trump Tower, because there is a political cost to this, in that it could be the strongest confirmation yet to MAGA that the Deep State is arrayed against him, and Democrats are desperate to avoid the optics of that. I think the most likely possibilities in terms of next step are either (1) months of delays will ensue because of some combination of Letitia James adding an extra 30 or 60 days or so for Trump to come up with the money; appeals court pauses the judgment for some period of time; and/or subsequent supreme courts take up the bond case on appeal; or (2) Engeron accepts a reduced bond amount, substantially lower than $500-ish but substantially higher than $100MM, that one or more of the 30 companies will agree to foot the bill for. Either way, by the time we turn the calendar to April, we will be disappointed that Trump will be evading justice yet again.

Oh-for-30. That’s some Javy-level futility right there. Looks like the Tines found that a rich benefactor is still part of the equation: Mr. Trump has asked the appeals court to pause the $454 million judgment that a New York judge imposed on Mr. Trump in the fraud case last month, or accept a bond of only $100 million. Otherwise, the New York attorney general’s office, which brought the case, might soon move to collect from Mr. Trump. Still, even if the higher court rejects his appeal, Mr. Trump is not entirely out of options. He might appeal to the state’s highest court, quickly sell an asset or seek help from a wealthy supporter.

I agree with this on its face, although I do think that Baby Doc has always been more hands off the team than Papa Doc was, and I also think that since he's come to Jesus about the Tigers, Baby Doc is more likely to allow the actual baseball people to make the decisions. I'd be more inclined to agree with you if there were a general clamoring by the fans and the press for Mize to make the team, but I honestly think Mize has been more or less forgotten about by the fans, as of today, and I don't see a movement afoot by the press to shill for him.

You're right, they do, but it's not as though they have to account for the money they are stealing from their country and using it for whatever they want. So what if they throw a couple billion at Trump and it comes up snake eyes? Especially the last two guys.

Orban? Erdogan? Vucic? Xi? Putin? Lots of people would like to keep Trump out of prison.

"I'm not mic'd up, that's not a banana in my pocket. Sure, I'm glad to see you. Why do you ask?"

I don't have any sense that Mize is considered a golden child by Harris, and I would be frankly surprised to learn that Mize would go up and Olson down for that particular reason.

Which we probably will, anyway.

Caught her red-handed how? They asked if that was her and she didn't answer either way, probably because she was asked in English and can't speak English. Then they drove away in a minivan. So where's the Mercedes? Where are the red hands?

I don't think that's true at all. We live in a society where people want to get on TV and be instantly famous all the time. I can totally see someone making up a story that they are confident can't be corroborated just to get on TV.

Before we talk about this one, let's talk about the first one you posted. What makes you think that woman is telling the truth? Take a look at the picture of the car. It's showing a man in what looks a douche Yankee hat driving with what appears to be a woman riding shotgun, and a person in between them, probably a child. How do we know that it's them? The woman in the car is wearing a hat; the woman on the street was not. I can't positively ID her. The probably-child between them, I can't make a positive ID that of him, either. How does she know that's them in the car? Why didn't she take a picture or video of them getting in the the car? That would be a lot more convincing. And even if it's they in the car, how do we know it's her car? Maybe it's his car, he's a trafficker, and he's running them out onto the street against their will. That would make it a scam, to your point, but that doesn't de facto mean it's her scam. It's true the report said the license plate was registered to a woman, but why didn't they name the woman? They certainly had the right to, and that would have been consistent with standard investigative journalism practice. Plus, the details from the interviewee seem kind of sketchy. She says they were counting money and laughing in the car. How does she know they were doing that? Were they holding the money up above the window and counting it so everyone around them could see? Who does something like that? The picture doesn't show any laughing, either. And the thing she said, the thing with the boulder? Do you really believe that? I mean, come on. All I know is that some woman got on TV and held their attention for two minutes with a story about a fake poor panhandler that's basically calculated to outrage. And hey, it worked, didn't it? And like I say, it might be true. But I see no proof positive that it is true, or that the woman has been proven by this story to be a thief and/or a scammer. To be clear, I'm not trying to change your mind. Your mind is made up, and good for you. I'm just saying, I have my doubts about this story that is 95% the word of the woman being interviewed and 5% a picture that might or might not even be the panhandler in question, a picture which came from the woman, which I guess means it's 100% the word of the woman being interviewed. That's plenty enough for a lot of people. It's not enough for me.

In a world where anything is possible, sure, it's possible. But I have my doubts about the veracity of the story in the first place. It doesn't really come together very well in the piece, does it? They seem to be hanging their entire credibility on the word of some woman being interviewed, and a grainy picture that doesn't seem to me to match the other very clear picture quite well. It does allow us to come to a convenient and satisfying conclusion, though, doesn't it?

So all panhandlers have Mercedes. Good to know.

I'm guessing 90% of people who call themselves Tiger fans have no clue who any of these players are.

Nicest thing anyone's ever said to me here. 😁

I'm constitutionally unable to able to ignore the panhandlers without guilt pangs. I don't know why.

Courtesy of Greg Abbott, the big city has absorbed roughly 30,000 migrants shipped here during the past year. As a result, entire families perch on street corners and retail stores to panhandle. I see several each day when I am moving about the city. At my grocery store, there are usually four families perched there every time we go, one stationed at the end of each parking row closest to the front door. I keep dollar bills in my car so that when I pull up to a traffic light and someone, usually a middle-aged man, walks down the line with a cup, I sometimes put a dollar in it, as long as he makes it all the way to my car and the light hasn’t changed to green yet. (Also, as long as he’s not smoking a cigarette. I draw a line at that.) With the families, though, I’m not quite sure what to do. I gave a dollar a couple times as I normally have, and I’ve gotten an unbelieving look and a flat “thank” in response, as though it were woefully insufficient. Which, yeah, I know it is. I totally get that. A couple times I gave two or three dollars, like, a dollar per person there, and I get the same response. Probably because when multiple bills folded, it still looks like a dollar to them, which looks woefully insufficient. So, am I supposed to give them a five so that they can see it’s that and not just a single? Or a ten? That’s what I don’t know. So I usually end up giving nothing, and I feel like a jerk. But if I were to give five bucks to a family at the grocery store, I have three other families staring at me while I do it, and then I feel like a jerk for giving to one and not to all. It’s really uncomfortable either way. Am I really supposed to make a show of walking to each family and hand out twenty dollars to them panhandling outside the grocery store? Plus, I’m not sure there’s not some sort of criminal gang behind the families forcing them to panhandle, taking the money away from them at the end of the day, and brutalizing them while they are out of our sight. That feels like a pretty likely scenario in at least some of the instances. The best situation would be the families aren’t there in the first place, of course, but I wouldn’t want to co-sign onto whatever brutal tactic the city would have to employ to force them to stay away. This is a bit of a problem and I’m not sure what my responsibility is here. #America2024

tl;dr he had a vague idea of what needed to be done and no idea how to actually do any of it.

Matt Manning has been just so good this spring. I am really looking forward to seeing him pitch in April. He seems like a lock for the fourth spot and now it’s between Reese and Casey for the fifth spot. Looking ahead, he goes to arb for three years in 2025-27 and then he’s probably gone in 2028. His agent is Scott Boras.

This guy is not a submariner. He’s a straight side-armer, and I’m thinking his motion might be harder/worse on his elbow than a submariner like Chad Bradford, or Tyler Rogers, might experience with theirs: https://www.mlb.com/athletics/video/comparing-rogers-bradford