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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

MAGA: Fake news.

True assuming the only effect of Trump is that Tradrepubs find a way to vote around him. But I do think a bigger effect of Trump is that millions will rush to the polls at one in the morning on Election Day just to make sure they are in line for the opportunity to vote against him—pretty much as I said, prematurely, in 2016.

Vast majority of MAGA would ignore it, but it would help peel off a few thousands people on the margins.

MAGA: 91% is an A.

Also MAGA: Mike Pence is just another RINO. Good riddance. Don’t let us see you on the streets around here at night.

I’ve seen pitchers throw like this, and I wish I could bring any of them to mind, because I’d like to see how their careers went.

I disagree with RJ Anderson from CBS Sports. The Tigers GM job was not a **** job, and the org would not struggle to find people to take it. There would always be hundreds of people who would take the job practically sight unseen, since there are only thirty major league GM jobs in the whole world. They are great jobs for people who are good at it, regardless of the team. Avila was simply very bad at it. Before you get me wrong, I’m not saying anything like Al Avila is a bad man. I’d bet he’s good to his family, goes to church, gives to charity, loves kittens and puppies, all that. But speaking only in professional terms, he was objectively wrong for the job that he Peter-principled his way into, possibly made worse by the likelihood that he campaigned Mike for the job he was grossly unqualified for.

👍🏼

Yes it was stupid, and to your implied point, having it hang over the case is doing the prosecution no favors. I suppose the fact that he is who he is shouldn’t lead the judge to make subjective judgments, but really, judges do that all the time, don’t they? I would just hate to learn that people conclude that having them stay on the prosecution team together would corrupt the case, or objectively hinder their ability to prosecute it, because it would do neither.

In all seriousness it should not matter whether it's the president of the United States or the president of the He-Man Woman Hater's Club. The things that matters are, is there a conflict of interest raised by the relationship, and is the relationship in and of itself material to the disposition of the case? The answer to both questions is, to all appearances, "no". So all discussion of distractions and whatnot is immaterial, except perhaps to what the judge feels personally comfortable with, and his personal comfort should not be a matter of jurisprudence.

So justice isn't blind? Huh. Whoda thunk.