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First-class amenities matter!

I’ve run down Baby Doc on this site as much and for as long as anyone else here, but I’ve been really impressed with his commitment to fix the team’s infrastructure (and beyond just the pipes in the bathroom), instead of just throwing up a Potemkin village like Papa Doc allowed Dombrowski to do. It’s obvious that should have been the plan from the very beginning, and it’s gratifying to see them actually following through on it. It may not lead us to the playoffs this year, or maybe even next year, because the rot was just so deep. But I think it will soon, and for a few years after. I have never felt so optimistic about the near future of this franchise.

Especially in the Gaza War thread.

Radio comedy solved that problem by having music, typically one song from the orchestra and then another featuring the singer. The better shows would also weave in commercials into the script. For example, Jack Benny would devote two or three minutes to a Jello or Lucky Strike bit. (Or, for a year anyway, Post Grape Nuts Flakes.)

The superannuated among us might remember as many as 39 episodes running during a season, a state of affairs that lasted well into the mid 1960s. That’’s a holdover from the live days of radio, when all major series would start their seasons in early October and end in late June, and they were committed to broadcasting a show, come hell, high water, or holiday, every single week, without fail, because there was no transcription yet and therefore no reruns possible.

Or subscribe to Apple TV for a month at $9.99, binge it, then cancel.

And goddamn it, it’s working. I blame Presbyterianism and its unshakable belief in a infallible, implacable, and muscular God who is lying in wait for the right moment to come to Earth to rain hellfire on the wicked and then reign over a dystopian Christofascist world for a thousand years.

Translation: “Don’t talk about that, that’s not important, we should be talking about how the Biden Crime Government is treating me worse than Navalny …”

I think there is probably room to take in both numbers, meaning the IDF number for combatants killed, and the health ministry’s number for total killed. I’m not really seeing how they must by definition be mutually exclusive and therefore, point of gun, choose one or the other. They may be both right, or at close to right, although there may be some definitional differences. I think most people agree that there have been a number of civilians, probably running into six figures, who have nothing to do with the politics of any of this who have been killed, wounded, missing, or made homeless from the ruthless and indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza. It’s been just ****ing horrific for people there who just want nothing more than to live ordinary, everyday lives. If I were a man given to praying for people, they’d be up near the top of my list.

In other news, Frank Luntz has been expelled from the Republican Party for his controversial views on vaccination. 😉

Or maybe Skubal is not actually maxing out? Does he have more in the tank than 100? Something we probably don’t know for sure just yet. Maybe he was just airing it out and not trying to torque his elbow on it, which wouldn’t be as bad. Assuming Skubal is maxing out, I do agree that it’s not in his best interest or that of the organization to show off during live BP in mid-February, although, I can see how an emotional 26-year-old who’s been scuffling along with injuries for several years now would want to prove to his coaches as quickly as possible that he’s in 100% tip-top shape.

McCosky sailed that ship into the deep blue sea a loooong time ago. That said, I’m not sure how else a beat writer, at least with the Tigers, could keep his job. The prior front office was long known to take umbrage with beat writers they felt were not playing nice enough with them, and Fenech paid the price for that, so really, only fanboys were allowed in the clubhouse, or at least writers who wouldn’t rock any boats. I’m pretty sure this front office isn’t prioritizing the transformation of this beat writing corps into a cabal of actual journalists any time soon, and I would think Baseball as a whole approves of this as the ongoing state of affairs, seeing as how they have their own fawning state media apparatus to help them market the game.

The park has an absolutely gorgeous view of downtown, I think even more so than Pittsburgh’s PNC Park. But there is also absolutely no way they can expand it into a big league park because its footprint is just so small. If they do expand MLB to Carolina, they’ll either have to call an audible and place it in the Raleigh-Durham DMA, which as a #24 is certainly big-league size, or put it in Charlotte anyway and eat Truist Field, which, I don’t think anyone in Baseball would be too concerned about having to do that.

Anybody else rooting for any or all of the verdicts to happen between July 18 and November 4? I kind of am ...

I remember in 1990, just as the first Gulf War was getting started, I went into Vegas Party Shoppe, the one that was in the old triangle-shaped architect's office, on the corner of Stanley and Van Dyke. The guy who owned it was Chaldean—natch—and basically within one day of the Kuwait invasion, he put this cartoon up right by the cash register. He was no dummy. He knew who his customers were.

These are also the same people who want to go to single-day voting with paper-only ballots that are hand-counted only which, I guess, is more secure?

Right, the likelihood is small, definitely way less than 50/50. But it would be essentially malfeasance to ignore taking it into account and not plan for possible related contingencies. And I believe there is also a non-zero chance that the state is frozen into inaction on going after him with great guns for the settlement money for fear of the potential blowback. Not high at all, but non-zero. I do think the most likely thing will be that New York goes after and gets all the money, and hardly any blood will be shed over it.

I won't pretend to know better than anyone else, especially you, one way or the other, but I'm just having trouble squaring the circle between Trump's history of anti-Muslim rhetoric and action, and the idea that Muslims will in great numbers vote for him. It would be tantamount to voting for their own expulsion from the United States, regardless that they are citizens. (Don't think a Trump administration would find some way to deport Muslim citizens that would hold muster with his handpicked Supreme Court? Hold my beer ...) But again, I can't say for sure that they could never.

Here's a reason to feel a little more optimistic about the election in November—assuming it's a free and fair one:

Thanks a lot, now I have coffee sprayed all over my laptop and desk.

I think the issue is the political cost of going after his money in a heavy-handed manner, and feeding into his victim complex. Hey, I am all for bankrupting the mother****er, same as everyone else here is, but there is not just one guy or his (crime) family being affected here. It's his red hat army up to 100 million strong. They need to go after the money, for sure, but they can't do so while ignoring the potential for social chaos once they do. They have to take it into account and figure out a way to mitigate that.

Sure, which is why I said beyond their history. I definitely would love to see Montreal come back to MLB. I love baseball French!

I don't think you have even a single thing to worry about here.

I would be rather surprised to see many, if any, of the Dearborn voters contemplated here voting for Trump in November. And even if they stay home, I'm having trouble envisioning how they can swing the state to Trump from a 155,000-vote margin for Biden in 2020. I am going off the assumption that Trump will not be winning any Biden 2020 voters in numbers enough to win the election, and flip side, I do believe Biden will securing more Trump votes than the other way around by a factor on multiples, and lead other marginal Trump 2020 voters to just stay home. Because when the rubber hits the road in October and people in Michigan finally start paying attention, to the election, I believe they will pull the lever for the Democrats in big numbers.

I am not OUTRAGED or UPSET at all. I don't have any personal feelings tied up in any of this at all. I'm just saying I think it's shameful that IDF is ignoring civilian deaths in its count, and that's worse that the Gaza ministry combining total deaths into one number, since the Gaza ministry is at least making an apparently good faith effort to count all the deaths which, to me, is the thing that really matters when it comes to making the tally. Good to see you're not making this personal! 🤣