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Good lord, have any of these people ever worked in a typical organizational situation before? None of them say anything that’s even remotely close to the right thing. Everything they say is off-putting and just weird.

But how are they going to wake up if they insist it’s Biden’s responsibility are not theirs?

Here are a couple different articles that articulate what the strategy behind all the chaos is. This is not incompetence, per se, as some wish to believe. This is purposeful and thought through. The Substack article is especially interesting, at least to me: The chaos isn’t accidental—it’s strategic and the point. In Trump’s second term, as he floats a third, what might seem like disconnected acts of governance are deliberate steps toward consolidating power. Each executive order, federal funding freeze, staffing shake-up, gutting of agencies, and emergency measure serves a singular purpose: dismantling democratic norms, overwhelming the system, and flooding the public with so much news that many actions go unnoticed. We are left distracted and confused, vulnerable communities lose access to essential services, organizations scramble to deal with potential funding losses, and accountability is eroded through illegal firings of inspectors general. This deliberate chaos is meant to create ripe conditions for a power grab. By keeping the public overwhelmed and resistance fragmented, the groundwork is laid for authoritarian control to solidify with little effective pushback. This isn’t governance—it’s the authoritarian playbook in action. As Stephen Miller bluntly stated earlier today, “there’s no lawful constraints” on the president’s ability to fire executive branch employees, dismissing established legal protections as “unconstitutional.” Weaponizing Chaos The recent federal funding freeze is a prime example of Trump’s use of chaos as a governing strategy. By halting grants and loans under the guise of an ideological “review,” the regime has destabilized schools, nonprofits, local governments, and critical programs like Meals on Wheels. The ripple effects are being felt nationwide, with every state reporting Medicaid outages, leaving millions uncertain about their healthcare and basic services. This manufactured disorder isn’t just disruptive—it’s a deliberate attempt to weaken public institutions and consolidate power. Officials will be left scrambling to answer vague, ideologically loaded questions like, “Does this program promote gender ideology or democracy?” Meanwhile, communities reliant on federal funding are panicking. Critical institutions that keep America safely running are paralyzed and when the dust settles, Trump will position himself as the savior—but only on his terms. ..... We Are Not Powerless While the chaos feels overwhelming, it’s critical to remember that we are not powerless. Trump’s tactics rely on confusion, fear, and division—but the reality is that there are more of us who believe in democracy than those who seek to dismantle it. The courts, though under strain, remain a vital tool to slow down these sledgehammer tactics. Legal challenges can delay or derail authoritarian overreach and buy time for organized resistance to grow stronger. The key is unity. Organizations, activists, and everyday citizens must recognize the power of collective action and coordinate their efforts. Resistance cannot afford to be scattered or reactionary—it must be strategic, proactive, and prepared. This has succeeded in Ukraine, where people, from the smallest villages to major cities, organized to resist aggression and corruption with remarkable speed and determination. Many need to snap out of their complacency. Our strength lies in numbers, in the courts, and in our ability to organize. The key is unity. That's what really stands out to me. The whole point of the fire hose is to confuse us, distract us, divide our attention, such that we are immobilized into inaction. Our chances for success lie only in our ability to slash through the jungle of horse**** the Trump cabal is carpetbombing us with and come together to identify and fight those specific parts that give us the best chance to cripple and defeat them, so we can put fascism and autocracy as far onto the backburner as possible, to buy us as many more decades of peaceful, cooperative governance as we can manage to. That may sound like some naive pie in the sky, but shouldn't that be our goal?

Yes, I can totally, absolutely believe it.

They campaigned on deporting undocumented people who committed crimes here, suggesting visions of violent MS-13-type criminals, but it won't be long until they evolve to all undocumented people committed a crime just by coming here, so deport them all, and that includes pregnant girls and women and their kids.

Might as well just stop at "****ed".

I would prefer they look at the screen and tell me where to go on it while I drive. I don't want to just hand it to them and not know how they got to where they got. Don't feed me fish. Teach me how to fish instead. But to your point, in my experience, the large majority of the time they just reach to grab the phone out of my hand. Talk about off-putting. Maybe they feel comfortable doing that because that's how they do it with their parents or grandparents. There was actually one guy a year or two ago who snapped at me in an passive-aggressive manner for not letting him snatch the phone out of my hand to show me something. I told him, I'll give him my phone when he gives me his. He had to have been in his 40s, so you'd think he'd know better.

Maybe they'll wow him with a side trip to Disney World and he'll end up staying?

High walk rate notwithstanding, he does controls the part of the strike zone that gets swing and miss, plus he limits hard contact. His xSlash last year was .173/.265. I think he's worth the ~$8MM gamble.

Speaking of which, this article just dropped on MLBTR: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/01/mlb-mailbag-bregman-red-sox-kelenic-tigers-marlins.html It's a subscriber-only article, but if you don't subscribe, I can share a little of it with you. They write that despite owner Jim Crane saying he is unwilling to pay the luxury tax for a second consecutive season, the 6/156 offer is still open to Bregman, per GM Dana Brown, and if you take them at their word that it is still an open offer, it would most definitely put the Astros over the threshold again, and all Bregman has to do is say the word in the next sixty seconds and he's back: I don’t see why Scott Boras wouldn’t just accept the Astros’ offer. It’s true: if he finds Bregman a bigger offer elsewhere, he wins. I’m not sure Bregman would be happier; I don’t know what’s going on in his head. But accepting $156MM to stay in Houston would hardly be a disappointment, and it’d still be more money than Matt Chapman received on his recent extension. Here's the Tigers' portion of the article: The only reason for the Tigers to sit this one out is not liking the value presented in signing Bregman at whatever price would get him there. The guy turns 31 in March and his walk rate fell off a cliff last year. As nice as the fit is in Detroit and as much as they can afford him, it’s still not necessarily a good signing if it’s in the $175MM range. I decided to subscribe for a month basically to get this article. I got a reward card from DirecTV and it's kind of free money, so why not.

I would bet a sawbuck you'll get your wish.

I wouldn't have minded signing Kim for a year or two. Plus defender, plus baserunner, controls the strike zone, little bit of pop. Plus, if the Rays like him, he can't be all bad. But I am somewhat optimistic about our shortstop prospects with Sweeney for the short term and Brice Rainer nipping at his heels.

I like the pick up of Tommy Kahnle. The only thing I don’t like is that he walks the world.

It has nothing to do with me and what I think of Detroit. This is not personal.

This is a double pet peeve, I guess: one of mine, and one about me, I suppose. Sometimes you might want to ask somebody who works at a retailer you’re visiting to help you go through an app on your phone, for example, how do I reach the digital coupons on your app? And so you will show them the screen while you’re prepared to do what they tell you to do, but then they reach for your phone, usually without even asking, as if to take it out of your hand so they can do it themselves. That’s a pet peeve of mine. I don’t want anybody grabbing my phone, particularly without asking, and swiping around on it. But then, their pet peeve must be old people who won’t give you their phone so you can do the thing for them that they’re asking you to do. I guess the idea of that peeve is they tell the old person what to do and they still screw it up. That happened to me just now. I tried to make a joke that it seems like the younger the person is with me, the more trouble I have with my phone in front of them, but they didn’t think it was funny, probably because I would not surrender my phone when they reached for it. Their face got sour, and they would not make any eye contact with me after that, because I just wouldn’t give them my goddamn phone so that they could do the thing for me I was asking them to do.

It hasn’t been like that for a long time now. The generation that would routinely engage in that kind of thing (Boomers, X) are pushing retirement age, if not already there, and today’s young generation (young millennials, Gen Z) were not socialized that way. Acting out like that is a lot a lot rarer than it used to be. Grid willing it will stay that way.

I love 6:40pm starts, and I’m glad the White Sox are going to them all year (and surprised, considering how suburban their fan base is). I wish the Cubs would do 6:40s all year instead of just April, May, and September.

You're one ahead of me. I didn't even bother cuing up the video.

I know there are some folks who are frustrated with how much faster games are going, but speaking as an old man, I approve this trend.

Decades of negative media coverage of a city will definitely hurt its image. It also doesn't help that the Tigers organization took a huge reputational hit after Dombrowski left. It was always going to take time to rebuild that, and it's very frustrating to be in the middle of it, but unfortunately, we're simply not there yet.

Looks like we might have blown right past the can't win don't try stage here ...

I was hoping this might happen with the Tigers, or better yet, MLB takes over the broadcast the way they did with the Pirates, Brewers, etc. Instead, we may have to see shifting odds with every pitch on the FanDuel network. Hoping not.

They're shooting the pets of the people who live there!

I might say here "so undocumented people are dirtbags, huh?", but then I remember she's probably including Puerto Ricans who are American citizens, too.

The obvious lie that Trump’s first inauguration was the most highly-attended in history, and their repeated insistence that it was true despite visual evidence, really was instructive to that cabal.