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What, is it 1957 already?

The Michael Lorenzen era is off to a rocky start.

Hill is a disappointment only to the degree you expected anything out of him.

You can’t shame MTG or any of the rest of those anti-democracy Putinites. They are beyond redemption.

Perfectly normal man who was President of the United States of America, and might well be again, talking about a perfectly normal thing he did.

One step closer to Trump announcing that he will campaign on reforming the judiciary.

We did read not long ago that Javy works best with in-your-face coaching. I’m not sure I believe that, either. But maybe we’ll see …

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We should offer Englert back to Texas for free.

I wonder whether Javy liked the idea of playing with the Tigers when Al Avila but not so much now that Scott Harris is here? Javy is pretty much an emotions-driven by-the-seat-of-the-pants kind of guy, and I wonder whether he might be chafing under the new studious data-driven rigor put in place by the new front office regime? I have no idea either way, but I do know there are players who like working with analytics to improve their game, and players who just want to show up and play ball, and I’m guessing Javy is in the latter group.

Oh, they are all for abortions for their daughters if it’s convenient. They’re just against abortions for your daughters. You’re the one who needs to be saved, not them. They’re already saved. 😏 But in all seriousness, yeah. 100%. It’s to their benefit to be in charge of people and control what they can and cannot do.

Relax, no need to become agitated or defensive. Sure, a person can just be nice. It happens a lot. I also find it interesting that a specific type of person in a specific area, which has a well-documented history of deadly oppression against that type of person, is unfailingly cordial to me, identified by sight as a possible representative of the local oppressor type, in stranger-oriented situations; while other types of people in that same area are not, and while the same type of person in other areas are also not. I suppose that that specific type of person in that specific area could simply just happen to be, as a group, far more cordial (or "nice", if you prefer) than the other types I mentioned. It's possible, but I find that a little far-fetched when taken against the other, to me more probable, explanation: that the history of deadly behavior toward that type of person precipitated a necessary survival strategy of highly-visible, inordinate, even excessive cordiality as a way of gaining enough approval in the moment to survive the encounter. This is consistent with the voluminous historical documentation of the subject, it was a very real circumstance well past the mid-point of the last century, and it makes more sense than the explanation that, by simple coincidence, this group of people in this specific area just happen to be far, far nicer (i.e., more cordial) than any other group of people in any other area I have encountered.

I've been keeping my eye out for a full book-sized kindle (~ 10" screen) that has a paperwhite background and allows for full color graphics. Either the technology is not there yet, or they're working on something like that now, or they're not actively working on it, or they've decided it's not worth the R&D hassle because iPads. But I would definitely drop a couple or three c-notes on something like that if it ever came out.

Also, Sue, I ran out of likes for the day. I'll try to remember to give you one when I come back in another day. 🙂

I almost always get physical books, mainly because I don't like staring at a backlit screen for long stretches of time. Especially true on those nights I wake up in the middle of the night, can't fall right back to sleep, and then want to read something to lead me back to dreamland. Although, by sheer coincidence, I did get a library book today through Libby, first time in maybe over a year, because an e-version was available but the actual book has a lot of holds on it. The book is: Adrift America in 100 Charts

Maybe someone should start a What Are You Reading thread! 😀

Both books are excellent. My read along these lines right now is Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, which came out late last year. It's the history of exactly what it says it is, starting with the "Indian Removal" process of the 1820s and 30s, through the War Between the States, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, post-Civil Rights, on up to Trumpism today, through the perspective of a single county, Barbour County, Alabama, home of the city of Eufaula. Fascinating and insightful. I am fortunate to have the great Chicago Public Library system that makes just about any book I want to read available to me for the price of the tax dollars I'm already paying them anyway.

That's exactly why I crapped out of it.

Ahem ... good call ... https://twitter.com/UmpScorecards/status/1646884274820317184?s=20

That's some pathetic s***.

Yes, I have read about this in several sources. It's about controlling their labor by controlling their movement and, really, their whole lives, to such a degree that until shockingly recently, any white man could feel free to walk into any black family's house, uninvited and without knocking, to threaten and abuse anyone inside, and the family couldn't do a thing about it, because the law and everything attended to it belong to white men, and if they pushed back it would all come crashing down on them. That was the power of control by state violence, and just like the TN legislators passed down their ways of thinking about it, black folks passed down their strategies for dealing with it, and strategy #1 was always: never come off as even a little disrespectful to a white person. Never. Ever. Try to avoid white people wherever possible, but if there's no way you can do so, then always smile, be overly polite, be overly pleasant, to let them know you're "one of the good ones". This social strategy is also well-documented. You've posted this here before, and It's so memorable that I've never forgotten it, and I've shared it with another person or two since.

First of all, we don't hang out in small towns when we travel. I'm talking about places like Nashville, Memphis, Jackson, Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta. Secondly, white people in small towns or big cities, either up north or down south, wherever, never go out of their way to engage me, a stranger, and smile or say hi. Every once in a while here in the big city a black person, usually an older black guy, will engage me that way. It's slightly jarring because it's so out of place around here. But it's really common with black people in the south, and every time we go. Not always, and not every one. But enough do to lead me to believe that there's a specific cultural thing among those folks in that area, and for some reason.

I am knocked out by the very idea of a guy from the south named Crow sponsoring a black federal government official.

It is definitely culturally ingrained, in everybody. Every time I go anywhere down south, I am struck by just how cordial black people are to me, how they almost seem to go out of their way to engage me, smile, say hi. That's something you rarely, if ever, see up here in the big city. Based on my fairly extensive readings of 20th-century American cultural and social history, my hypothesis is that they want to proactively communicate to me that they are not a threat to me and then hopefully I won't use the power of the state to go rogue all over them.

Tigers can get out from under Baez the player any time they want, but they can never get out from under Baez the contract.