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I feel "schmuck" is too soft a name to call FElon. 😁

So does iOS autocorrect.

Whoa, Foley cut all his straggly hair off!

I believe pitching chaos was based on not having more than two pitchers who could reliably start game. I believe the effect of pitching chaos was to keep other teams off-balance and affect their ability to prepare for the game—to your point, not letting get hitters get comfortable.

Maybe they want another pandemic so they can manage it the way they wanted to last time.

Honestly, I'm having a little trouble trying to figure out whether the overly cautious language is from CNN or the "watchdog group" itself. Here's the full section contemplating it: According to federal regulations, government employees must not use public property “for other than authorized purposes,” with exceptions for “de minimis personal use,” such as sending a personal email from a government account. Donald K. Sherman, the chief counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Pinover’s posts appeared to violate rules prohibiting the use of government resources for private gain, and would not be considered “de minimis.” The rules don’t “give cover to a federal employee using government resources to subsidize their private business,” Sherman said. “It is highly problematic that while dedicated civil servants who want to work for the government are being fired for all manner of dubious reasons, or are being forced out by this administration, that someone at the agency leading that attack on the civil service is using their government job for private gain.” Sherman, the guy from the group, says the actions "appear" to violate the rules and that using a government job for private gain is "highly problematic", which is all really watered down language to describe using taxpayer-funded resources to help your side hustle. So, he's not helping by swinging and missing at the alarm bell. Leave it to the cited federal regulation itself to unequivocally affirm that public property MUST NOT be used for private gain. That seems pretty clear to me.

From the CNN story: One watchdog group said her videos could run afoul of rules restricting the use of government property for personal benefit because, while in the workplace, she was using a website that pays content creators commissions from the clothing brands they promote. "Could run afoul of rules". Or maybe could not. Let's have a debate about it.

Everyone else will be, though.

On Sunday we left the game at 3pm to get to TPA for a 5:50pm flight. Instead of taking us down I-4, which is the most direct route, Apple Maps routed us around it, west on 582 (Griffin/Knights Station Road), then down 39 back to I-4, which was still clogged in spots going into Tampa. The estimate when we left was 57 minutes. It took us nearly an hour and a half instead. But by the time we dropped off the car, took the tram, got through TSA and arrived at the gate, they were just starting to board. So the delay just happened worked out perfectly this time.

You may be on to something. His career splits indicate that Mazda does seem to be stronger against the first hitters he faces, especially in relief. This might be an indication that the contrast between his stuff and the stuff of the pitcher he relieves is substantial enough to flummox batters out of the gate.

I wouldn’t do this myself because it’s not my style, but I think the practical joke is fine. After all, regardless of whether he is MAGA, the salesman is presumably a willing and eager representative of the Tesla company, not an captive being pressed into service against his will. And it’s not as though the joke is picking his pocket or breaking his leg. After all, the drop in Tesla sales as a result of FElon’s noxious policies had already been picking the guy’s pocket even before the prank call. This is one of the ways the marketplace expresses its dissatisfaction—even better than a simple down arrow on a sales chart, actually, since it provides a vital piece of information as to why sales are plummeting. If the salesman can’t take this relatively gentle kind of heat, there are any number of sales positions with reputable companies he could take instead. Big boy pants applies here.

Where’s the $100 million coming from? Taxpayers?

I’m not so convinced that even Musk is going to get blamed by dispossessed red hats for their getting shorted on their Social Security or Medicare, let alone Trump. First of all, the regime will develop a complete horse**** story for the cuts even before they happen, in which the remaining Democrats, the former deep state, the media, and assorted other enemies of the state will be fully blamed for the debacle to come. It doesn’t matter that none of these entities have any actual power—they will be imbued with just enough power to be blamed for the debacle before it occurs. And secondly, I think we overestimate just how sensitive Trump’s core base even is to shifting economics. A really high percentage of hardcore red hats live hardscrabble lives of desperation and deprivation. They suffer in both good times and bad, such that things stay the same for them all the time—meaning, always terrible. The reason they go for Trump is not so much to restore an economic status they never had in the first place anyway, but to restore their social standing of being in the racial group that is explicitly favored by the government. It kills them, absolutely kills them, to see people of color doing better than they are, so the hardcore base’s heart’s desire is to see them dragged back down to their natural level, in which the level of the highest black person is far below the level of the lowest white person. You know, like it was back when America was great. So I really don’t see how those people are going to rise up against Trump simply because they’re not getting the checks from a program they’ve already been told for decades is going to be bankrupt by the time they come to collect anyway. OK, so, what about the Trump voters who are economically sensitive? Won’t they rise up once the **** hits the fan? I don’t think so, because that’s where the first part comes back in—the horse**** story part, which they of course will believe, because their media will tell them to believe it, so of course they will, because where are they gonna hear anything different? They might rise up, all right, but it won’t be against Trump or Musk. It will be against who they’ve been told is at fault. Only something unexpected that can’t planned for can break the spell. That could happen tomorrow, or that could happen in 50 years. Who knows.

Russia is going to know whatever intelligence is being shared even before Ukraine knows.

Fun fact about little Miss Attractive on TV: She is 27. Her husband is 59. He put a baby in her. Here's the Wikipedia page attesting as much. See if you can ace the hidden math test and morality check within: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoline_Leavitt#Personal_life Leavitt is married to Nicholas Riccio, a real estate developer 32 years her senior.[35][36] They announced their engagement in December 2023 and were married in a private ceremony.[37][38] She gave birth to their son on July 10, 2024.[39] She had planned to go on maternity leave, but changed her mind after seeing the July 13, 2024, attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, and resumed her professional duties.[39][40] Leavitt is a Roman Catholic and credits her Catholic schooling for instilling pro-life values, discipline, and the importance of public service.[13]

I approve this practical joke. It belongs on a Morning Zoo broadcast.

She trotted out the "fair and balanced" line!

How much of driving the stock market to its knees is part of a conscious, possibly hare-brained scheme to bring corporations to his heel by flexing his ability to drive their corporate valuations into a ditch at his whim? Tell me there's no way this can work. Then tell me why.

This is true in normal political times.

Because he won't let the whole 51st state thing go, we can now assume that Trump was definitely never kidding about annexing Canada. I think at this point we have to assume that Trump will eventually initiate military action to occupy and annex Canada, because there is no way Canada would ever join the US voluntarily, and Canada will practically starve themselves, coupled with a collapse of western European aid to keep them propped up, before they would ever agree to join the US tail between their legs. I would assume there are fifth column elements in Canada right now working to soften up the target for such an action. I would also bet that a walled-off militarized border is in the planning stages on both sides. That's not a today or tomorrow thing—that would be a in-a-year-or-two-if-things-keep-going-the-way-they-are thing. And once that wall goes up on the Canada side, it is never, ever coming down again, even if Gretchen Whitmer were to become president.

Agree. And MAGA parents will not be euthanized pending special pleading approval.

Agree. And MAGA parents and disabled relatives will escape euthanasia, pending special pleading approval.

How much of this is part and parcel of an explicit MAGA cult strategy to cull the population of weak people and old people? After all, Germany had a well-defined Aktion T4 plan for "involuntarily euthanizing" disabled people as being "life unworthy of life", and that included working off lists of patients at old-age homes for residents with conditions like senile dementia. And I think most people accept that a high percentage of MAGA faithful get their inspiration from that.

OK, so, fortunately, I was able to locate the idea within a minute and a half, and it makes more sense to me now. He's not trying to charm us with his fire-breathing at State of the Union addresses—it's how he is getting apostate republicans in line for the budget vote, using good cop techniques, or at least balancing it with his more natural bad cop: Although honey, vinegar, cement, and iron sounds more like something RFK Jr would recommend to prevent measles, COVID, and AIDS.

I don't watch Degrassi, so I wouldn't know. I was just trying to highlight beautiful Canadian women in their 20s—Tate McRae came right to mind; I had to find Anna Cathcart for the post—to make the point that Justin Trudeau doesn't have to "waste his time", as it were, on women pushing 50.