The Dodgers on Bauer, a minor leaguer is in trouble, MLB Network is off YouTube, and we talk Florida fascism, Italy's birthrates, Tom Brady's divorce, hiking among mountain lions, and drinking bleach
Same. Even if they did have a lot in common, any couple with one or two high-pressure jobs involved, especially if there is a lot of traveling, is always going to have a hard time. Glamorous highly-paid jobs don't lessen the issues that much.
It's my understanding they weren't the typical ultra-rich, have a nanny on staff 24/7 kind of couple. I could totally see Gisele growing tired of doing it all herself (including when Tom's son with Bridget Moynahan was around the house). The word I got was they had a family meeting and agreed retirement was the obvious choice. Then Tom suddenly reverts course without so much as even telling his wife. Gisele is worth more than two times what Tom is so it isn't like she needs his money.
Stan Kasten was a smarmy dickhead when he was Nats GM - most famously, openly encouraging fans of division rivals like Philly and New York to come to DC if they couldn’t see their favorite team at home. At least he’s consistent in his smarmy dickheadedness?
Yes he did. I will say it does feel a little like Ol' Leatherpants Bowden is back, what with all the aged arms being brought to camp to catch what he called "lightning in a bottle."
And yet for some unknown reason, the very same people who deny the Expos history as being part of the Nats' history, are now saying Tom Brady is a "franchise legend" deserving of being in their "ring of honor." Now, I get that many fans are from Virginia, where it's not uncommon to pick and choose the history that gets acknowledged...
I'm a lifelong Virginian, and I'm grateful that for once someone else's owner fucked up so badly that the team had to be moved ***TO*** DC for a change (we're 1-2, baby) ... Thanks for the ballclub, Montreal!
Also - were all those Brady/Expos tributes not mocking/ironic? That's how I read it.
I believe the significant presence of the irony-challenged in the Natmosphere makes that inference unlikely. Just read through the comments on MASN if you need an example.
- As you might recall, SNY is still owned by the Wilpons. So it's not terribly surprising, but still really frustrating that they can't reach an agreement with Keith Hernandez to bring him back in 2023. They're nickeling and diming a beloved figure and running the risk he starts the season somewhere else. I wonder just how long before Cohen decides to just make Freddy and Jeff an offer they can't refuse since I suspect he wants Keith back too.
- Howie Rose revealed this week that the reason for his frequent breaks from his radio duties is he's been dealing with bladder cancer. He's doing better now, but it's been rough. You can read about it here: https://awfulannouncing.com/mlb/mets-howie-rose-bladder-cancer.html. Wishing Howie all the best as he tries to get back in the swing of things.
I saw that a member of the Eagles - the football team about to play in the Super Bowl, and not the band - was charged with some pretty awful crimes. And was immediately placed on administrative leave. If a player about to be in the biggest game of the year can be told not to play, certainly MLB can implement a similar policy for anyone accused of domestic abuse or sexual assault while the process plays out. But if Khalil Lee were more of a valued prospect, I am sure he'd be in Port St. Lucie in two weeks. (I figure they quietly tell him to stay home but don't make a big deal out of it.)
MLB absolutely does employ such an administrative leave for DV investigations. See eg Bauer, discussed today. He was on a rolling seven (?) day leave for most of a year before discipline was imposed (and appealed). Or Ozuna and many (far too many) others since the implementation of the joint MLB MLBPA domestic violence policy a couple of years ago.
To what purpose? He would still be paid and take a 40 man roster slot. He isn’t with the team now anyway. Wait until spring training camps open before worrying about leave pending an investigation.
Just to make the point that he might not be welcome. And I think any employer ought to do that for this class of crime. (About the only place I am a hardliner.)
Not to downplay the allegations, but the player on the Eagles was a practice squad player who only played in one game this year and didn’t dress for either playoff game. This obviously made it very easy for the Eagles to take the correct stand.
Rather different allegations, but I'm reminded of Eugene Robinson. No, not the political commentator who writes at the Washington Post and elsewhere. But the former 3x pro bowl NFL defensive back for the Falcons and others.
In 1999, Robinson was the recipient of the Bart Starr Award. That is similar to baseball's Roberto Clemente man of the year and was the precursor to the present Walter Payton Award given for off field leadership and high moral character. The award was presented the day before the Super Bowl.
That night, after the ceremony, Robinson was arrested for soliciting an undercover police officer. Oops.
He was released on bail and played in the game the next day. But was torched by the Broncos for a long touchdown early in the contest.
Robinson was also the fool who was caught on camera in the previous Super Bowl mocking the Broncos, while Terrell Davis was running all over them and winning the game. It was a glorious day. Also, fuck Tom Brady with a deflated football.
I vividly remember (as a 15-y.o. Broncos fan) Rod Smith catching that ball and running away from Robinson. I don't think I got the enormity of the situation at the time, just that he'd been arrested, got to play anyway, and probably wished he hadn't.
i'm wondering if Keith is just such a pain in the A to SNY mgmt that they are making a statement here that "your return is not automatic." it seems that he works when he feels like it - not sure what his contract terms are/were - you see many games where it's Gary and Ron only (and quite a few Gary/Keith only, maybe w/Ron doing Turner games). The dynamic w/3 of them is the best baseball TV there is, and I mean usually who turns in to watch the announcers - in this case I think we can say Mets fans do. You never know what Keith is going to say/do/what his takes are. I think he probably has some problematic takes politically but as long as he leaves them at home I can enjoy the broadcasts. I would imagine if SNY doesn't re-sign him, there are very limited windows for him to appear outside of conservative media. So once the flexing is done, I suspect this will resolve shortly.
Some of his problematic takes *have* made it to the air. One that comes to mind is his rant a number of years ago when the Mets' opponent, I think the Cards, had a female assistant trainer in the dugout.
Yankees, for their part, have their own tRumper, in O'Neill but while he doesn't make revealing comments he IS as bad at his job as Collinsworth in the NFL.
O'Neill will do old school stuff with Kay nodding along on how bad "today's game" is. these kids with their stats. I have them muted so often I've prob missed the toxic stuff. Paul the warrior has also been broadcasting from his basement in Ohio during the pandemic, obv with management approval, which tells you some *more* stuff about Levine/Trost/Hal if you didn't already know.
Maybe I'm flattening everything out with time passed but I never really got the sense that O'Neill was a "the game today sucks" guy - I just don't think he adds anything to the broadcast and absolutely mails it in. Also YES should dump him for the basement shit alone. They are really unnecessarily bending over backwards for him.
Padres, IIRC, but that was a long, long time ago. Keith has learned to edit himself, which is good, because I do think a lot of what comes to his mind would get him fired. Of course, moments like "I wasn't talking about the hot dog" will always sneak out, but they're more often golden than not.
as I say to this dude at the dog park (guy in his 70s who like me loves playing the horses, and also loves his weed) when he says something with sexual innuendo like we're back in JHS:
"hey, Joel, just because it pops into your head doesn't mean you *have* to say it." same, Keith, same.
He only wants to work certain games, is the issue (I imagine - I'm not in the room). He was down to 100 games last year, and we know he hates doing Phillies games for the poor fundies, so I imagine he's trying to cut it back to half the season and the Wilpains are balking at that. I do very much wish they'd go away already.
In fairness, we don't really know whether it's SNY or Hernandez who is the obstacle in his contract. For all we know Hernandez is expecting raise every year, and perhaps the looming financial struggles of RSNs makes that no longer possible. Or maybe he just wants more off days than he's had, and he's gotten a lot in the past. He may have reached the age that if he's going to continue working, it'll be on his terms or he'll just retire.
If it was only SNY being unreasonable, presumably they'd have been unreasonable on Ron Darling and Gary Cohen's contracts too. And yet those two were able to reach an agreement.
I feel like our host is going out of his way to criticize the Dodgers for making the right decision with the rapist. He was on paid (per mandatory arbitration award) leave and not actively representing the club. I strongly suspect they waited until the last minute to desperately try to trade him and only lose 99.9% of the money rather than all of it. A corporate entity taking two weeks to make and effectuate a seven figure decision is bog standard.
And that conversation? Dollars to donuts it was:
Dodger Exec: “We would much rather add a recent Cy Young winner with electric stuff to our rotation than light a giant pile of cash on fire. Unfortunately for both of us, you are such a vile jackwagon that we have to pick option 2.”
The bare minimum is to comply with the terms of the arbitrator's final decision: an unpaid suspension that ends on a date certain and eligible to continue to play. Instead, they released him, eating something like $26M. They had twenty-six million reasons, not including his actual playing ability, to chose not to do that.
That they did what I believe to be the right thing, but not as quickly as you'd like, is a point in their favor in my ledger.
Adding: it is exactly because Bauer is such a jackwagon that I am glad that the league and team went through every administrative step in the process and afforded him the opportunity to plead his case and / or make amends. There is a lot of danger in deciding that someone is so reprehensible that they aren’t entitled to due process.
Also, while my understanding is that with Bauer, the money was already determined and as long as they cut him he wouldn’t get paid anymore, I think there is a strong argument to make that a team minimizing what they pay a horrible person is a good thing.
The White Sox are being pilloried on local radio for not having immediately released Mike Clevinger after the domestic violence allegations against him, and it’s been suggested that they should be happy to eat the $12M they owe him for the sake of cutting all ties immediately. While I don’t doubt their reasoning is selfish, if they’re able to recoup some of that money then that means a bona fide piece of human garbage gets less money so I’d consider that a good thing.
Agree. This business about immediately suspending a player has ramifications. There have been instances of false allegations in the past. Aside from the human element of heated domestic issues having a lot of weird dynamics, the pivot toward gambling gives a crooked gambler every incentive to recruit a 'victim' the day before a big game. Of course it's illegal, but what's the risk/reward balance?
I don't have an answer for what the proper level of protections for players should be, but there has to be some sort of process.
I don't have THE answer, but AN answer is to follow the procedures that are set out in the MLB-MLBPA Joint Agreement on Domestic Violence. Perfect? Of course not. And the victim is not a party to that process. But it seems to me to be a reasonable starting place.
I'd also note for the folks complaining that the Dodgers didn't take earlier action or the Mets in the situation that just came to light that the agreement expressly provides that the initial disciplinary process belongs to the league and union and that a club may impose discipline only in limited circumstances that are set out on page 5.
What's happening in Florida scares the crap out of me. Apparently the Democratic party in Florida is a mess, partially due to the gerrymandering that has left it completely impotent, so there is no organized opposition with any power to resist DeSantis. It's Germany in 1933 down there. A mass boycott of spring training, OrlandoWorld and spring break might have some effect, but that's never going to happen. The Boomers sitting in God's Waiting Room don't give a rip about education because they got theirs so the hell with everyone else, and besides, Ron speaks for their racism and transphobia. The immediacy of his desired results trumps (pun intended) the long-term disaster that Florida is facing.
The main drivers of Florida tourism position themselves as LGBTQ+ allies and beacons of inclusivity. Disney, airlines, hotels, cruise ships ... their silence is deafening. I have friends that live in that state and have been suggesting they leave for years, but there's only so much I can do.
Then you have the other side that is also silent but Desantis is there guy: US Sugar, Monsanto, Mozaic, The Timber companies, and the Ranchers. Those folks control the state, tourism will always be good because most people don't pick their vacations based on state politics. Plus after Disney and the Reddy Creek thing no one wants to say anything critical about Desantis any more
Tourism is the largest contributor to the GDP of Florida and it is growing faster than agriculture. I realize nobody wants to be critical of the governor but there are plenty of other ways to get the word out.
Born and raised in Florida and still living here. I hope Desantis runs for president and gets the hell out of here. Although I think the legislature is going to repeal the law that says you must relinquish your office if you run for a different position. He was elected the first time by less than 30k votes. I knew when he won by 1.5 million it would go to his head. He is moving our state to crazy land because he is even more to the right than the republican legislature. I mean he re gerrymandered the voting districts in the because the Legislature didn't gerrymander it enough to his liking. His antics play well to the particular breed of old folks here now. The key is you have to be wealthy to retire here this days, that wasn't always the case. As much as he has "succeeded" here, I don't think it will play well on a national level. I can't wait to see him against some real competition. I also want some one to tell him that 2009 called and wants it's word back: woke.
I'll tell you, I finished my Ph. D just in time for the entire industry to collapse, and as a historian, watching all this happen again is giving me serious Maginot Line vibes...
The Period Monitoring Police will also serve as an alert system for any potential pregnancies and abortions, as well as harassing trans people. It's a bigotry and misogyny two-fer!
I read something that put a lot of the blame for their recent awfulness on them never having a reckoning after WWII in the same way Germany did. They got off lightly in that sense and their fascists could position themselves in the same way the Confederates did on the US.
Part of it is that, against the pure evil of Hitler and the dehumanization of the Japanese (both in foreign and domestic propaganda), Mussolini is easy to frame as the buffoon trying to play in the deep end of the pool and just splashing around. But we know he was the one who essentially created the fascist playbook that is still being followed today.
Similar to how in the US it's easy to mock white supremists for the white hoods and silly titles while ignoring the ways they were able to recruit and infiltrate all throughout society and government and thus gain power and influence far beyond their actual numbers.
exactly. I try to emphasize to my friends that it’s incredibly important to take your enemy seriously for this reason
stuff like characterizing Trump or Bush (or Berlusconi, or, recently in a play I despised, Hoover) as dumb buffoons with backwards thinking *helps* them, as it makes them appear entertaining or harmless
they understand power structures and have reasons for hating non-men/minorities/queer people and its about consolidating power and they know that. they are acting strategically. don’t forget that for a second
Nailed it. They look like clowns and buffoons to us because we aren't their target audience. I was watching a program and it was funny how Mussolini had those weird facial expressions on a head shaped like a potato, and Hitler was a short little weirdo with a silly mustache and they both looked absolutely ridiculous, but it didn't stop either of them from murdering on an enormous scale.
somewhat… we also did string up Mussollini and stuff. the antifa in Italy were some brave souls. the problem was mainly in the 60’s and 70’s people got so scared of becoming a communist country that they handed the reigns back to the racists. Germany did the division thing and had a longer, more painful reckoning
the concept of Italy was a imperialist construction that easily became a fascist one. I agree that people who really care about capital “I” Italy are the worst.
but there are lots of lovely welcoming people in their various regions that are welcoming and are actively hostile to borders, nationhood, etc that I’d like to stick up for :)
I've really grown to hate how people view nations as a static thing rather than transitory local governments ruling over multi-ethnic societies. Some chosen, some imposed.
This latest hubbub about Italy's birthrates has me responding "What is an Italian?" which most people consider self-evident because they know almost nothing about the region currently known as Italy. I mean technically I'm "Italian" but really 163 years ago my family lived in The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, prior to that numerous other arrangements, and ethnically they are a mix of Latin cultures currently residing in Italy, Greeks, Persians and a bit of north African.
Which of course are themselves migratory mixtures from other groups, ethnicities and tribes. And so on, all the way back to Africa.
I blame 23andMe and the other cheap genetic testing companies for making this less clear, it was an opportunity to present history more realistically but instead it's reinforced the poor understanding school gave us.
My ex-father in law's family were Italian immigrants from Piemonte. They never, ever cared about Italy with a capital "I." Their land of origin was Piemonte and, if anything, they felt more German/Austrian than Italian, and everyone from Milan and points south were a bunch of crazy people who adorably tried to govern as if Italy were a country as opposed to a temporary state of being.
Of course, my ex-father-in-law's uncle Celso, who never came to America, was a Fascist until the exact point during the war when it was no longer a good thing to be, so I take a lot of what they used to tell me with a healthy grain of salt.
Yup, my family immigrated from Sicily and absolutely did not consider themselves Italian. People conflate Italy with the Roman Empire, but Italy as a single nation really only came into existence in 1863 I believe and previously was several different nations/states.
Our culture does everything it can to discourage birth rates. Women almost always face material penalties for having kids during their prime educational/career years.
Assuming the high schoolers tell the truth when questioned on their periods. And when you'd be harassed for being trans or pregnant, why would you? Still, the fact that it will be ineffective doesn't make it any less reprehensible.
Oh I know that, I was never, EVER predictable, ever ... until now when I'm waiting for menopause it's like clockwork, which just makes me so mad every time that it hasn't stopped yet.
I don't have any girls, but my oldest is a freshman and literally cannot tell me what time his classes begin and end (he's a bit of a himbo, though, God love him). Expecting girls that age to know the frequency and duration of their periods might be asking a bit much.
I assume the effect will be to push girls out of high school sports. Yeah, we personally tracked our periods because we needed to know when to carry supplies. But unless teenagers have changed a lot recently I can't imagine they'd want to share that information with anyone--especially if it could lead to a criminal investigation.
Maybe that's part of the plan, maybe it's just a side effect.
I suggest that we all bombard whatever social media and e-mail accounts that the State of Florida and the Governor's Office have with our fake answers to those survey question.
"When did you have your first period?" 243 B.C.E. - don't remember the exact date.
"When did you have your most recent period?" - Purple.
On DeSantis, hopefully the youth of America will wisely turn out in '24 to keep him from advancing his agenda nationally. Seemed to work last time, so I remain hopeful.
On Brady, one interesting tidbit I read in commentary yesterday was that his playing again last year could have been a strategy to keep Gisele from getting any of his Fox TV $$, meaning the divorce would have happened whether he played or not and wasn't caused by him going back to play. Because that'd kick the can down the road post-divorce on the start of that deal. Who knows though? Like you said Craig, none of us ever know what's going on w/someone else like that. And it's not really our business. But, if that was indeed the case, a shrewd (i think) business move on his part, and then having to go thru a terrible season (he looked miserable) with Todd "I couldn't coach the Jets but here I am with the GOAT and I'm still terrible" Bowles and all the funsies that went on down in DeSantisVille USA. Now that organization is literally shredded. And you wonder how in God's name will he resist the urge to go to SF and carry the 49ers over the line next year after a few weeks of rest. I don't think too many of us believe he's done.
With Phil's grim news this AM of 6 more weeks of winter, at least theoretically, at least we can celebrate only a few more weeks until some actual baseball news/action.
More likely he didn't know what else to do with himself. He's certainly not the first professional athlete who had a difficult time.coming to terms with retirement.
I think that's why Randy Johnson being a photographer impresses me more. He found a whole other career that he seems to enjoy and is completely different than the physical skills used to pitch.
Doesn't even have to be sports. I'm pretty sure we all know people who retired from a career they enjoyed, even at a late age, but had no hobbies and had no idea what to do with their days when they weren't working.
I've noticed managers are often lost like that. So they take to managing a spouse and their kids and wind up doing things like puttering around the house and measuring the amount of sediment they flush out of a water heater and wondering if it means anything that the dry weight of it is more this year than it was last year, did the water quality change going into their house?
Oh me too. I have hobbies that I'd love to have more time with instead of evenings and weekends. My dad had an adjustment period when he had to really register that if he wanted to clean out the garage, he didn't have to rush to get it done in two days before he went back to work. Once he actually got used to being retired (it took him a couple months I think) he got involved with volunteering and had time to garden and do more woodworking and stained glass and make things for his grandkids and now he doesn't know when he found time to work! That's what I hope for in my retirement. I'll never be able to afford to travel all over the world but being able to do my own things on my own schedule would be phenomenal.
Setting aside the built in sexism (other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?) it is also very uninformed on the nature of alimony and property settlement. "After acquired assets" or things that a spouse receives after a separation are often included in the distribution if they are reasonably foreseeable during the existence of the marriage.
(That was actually a point that was expressly litigated in the one player divorce I was involved in back in the 1990s. The player signed a FA contract shortly after the settlement agreement was finalized; we successfully argued that it was easily foreseeable, in part, because the player had just lead his league in Hits.)
Not that kind of lawyer, but I seem to remember in Community pProperty class that the assets are separate when one party decides that they are never reconciling, so a settlement agreement or finalized divorce are not prerequisite to excluding income from alimony. I don’t think it has any bearing on child support.
On Brady carrying the 49ers over the line, for what it's worth he had the 20th best QB rating last season. #1 was Brock Purdy. Now to be sure a lot of that was due to the coaching and systems they were operating under. Still, it's kind of a hard sell to say Brady would be an upgrade.
Old QBs seem to just fall off a cliff at some point once the arm strength goes. Peyton Manning did the same thing following a rather strong penultimate season.
i think he'd be an upgrade over Purdy not playing at all, which seems likely with his UCL tear. And the uncertainty over Lance's status as well. Certainly at his age/stage he'd be a one year fill-in.
I just don't get how a team that signed one QB to a big contract and had two really good replacements is in a place that it might move on from all three. Something doesn't add up.
Staten Island Chuck predicted an early spring for the eighth year running. Though I suspect that he just looked at the forecast and utter lack of snow hereabouts.
I'm always amazed at how someone with the resources to buy anything (anyone?) he wants would want more. Already have a Learjet - maybe you should have a personal A330. I certainly know that lots of people have the fixation because I see it everywhere, but it just seems so alien and stressful.
Also, we changed our cable package recently to save a little bit of money. We now don’t have MLB Network. I do watch Quick Pitch at times but I do not expect to miss it as most their programming and on-air personalities are horrible
While it is true declining populations disrupt labor, pension systems, and economic growth, it's also true that any system that depends on perpetual population growth is ultimately unsustainable. While immigration could buy some time for the unsustainable to continue, in the end it's still a Ponzi scheme*.
* In deference to Simon, I'll acknowledge that it is not truly a Ponzi scheme by definition. I only meant that it requires an ever growing number of new participants to support the past participants, like a Ponzi scheme requires, and thus can't continue forever.
That line of thinking has always been so confusing to me given that the global population has the earth's resources already stretched to their absolute limits. It seems like we'd want that rubber band to snap back, at least a little. Of course, as someone who was recently almost a young person, I've realized in the past decade or so that basically every politic decision/conversation is centered around absolutely maximizing the next decade and assuming the world will end before the bill comes due
I’m not smart enough to know if humanity is stretching resources to their absolute limits. Certainly people are saying so. Otoh, people have been predicting that sort of thing for over 100 years—every billion citizens caused the same sort of hand-wringing we see today, but yet the human race is better fed and generally freer from violence than ever before.
There probably is a limit to the number of humans, but is it 8-9 billion or 20 or 30? I doubt anyone really knows.
The only way to know is to realize it when it is too late. So, what do you do? Underestimate the Earth's capacity or ignore the evidence that we are there already?
Helping to improve the conditions of developing nations? That seems to stem population growth without forcing anything on anyone. And improves quality of life. Seems win win to me.
You miss the point. Supporting a population for even several generations does not mean the resources necessary to have done that are sustainable. You can talk about how earlier estimates were tied to incorrect predictions of mass starvation (that actually does exist, of course) and the like, but many many experts believe that the biggest effects will be felt in 50 to 100 years. How do YOU propose to deal with the uncontroverted evidence of resource depletion, mass extinctions, polution, etc? It is a silly argument to claim there must be no problem if the alarmists can't give you a satisfactory solution.
You don't have to trust them, you only need understand how SS works. The payroll taxes being collected from our family today are being paid out, today, to my parents and my wife's parents and the rest of that generation. In a couple of decades, my son's payroll taxes will go to my generation. Rinse. Repeat.
It's not a 401(k) with your name on a pool of money. It's money goes in, money goes out. When fewer workers are supporting more retirees, something has to give.
Still, SS admittedly doesn't meet the full definition of a Ponzi scheme, even if it does have the constant need for new investors to pay off old investors.
I definitely feel SS is a pseudo ponzi scheme. Paper's point with respect to robbing one generations wealth to pay another hits the nail on the proverbial head for me.
I was kind of surprised to see so much angst in my feeds from folks lamenting the MLB Network/YouTube thing. Aside from their embarrassingly too-infrequent documentaries, is there any reason to watch that channel? The original programming is mostly…not good. Is there something I’m missing?
As I said yesterday, if they would go all in on a RedZone-type nightly whiparound show (and keep the Harold Reynolds/Al Leiter/etc. nonsense to a minimum, preferably zero) I'd likely have it on every night. I really like Quick Pitch and wouldn't mind catching the live show.
I think they tried that last season, although it may have been part of the MLB streaming package rather than MLB Network. Living on the west coast, it really didn't work for me. By the time I would turn it on, there might only be 2 or 3 games going and at least one of them would be a 8-2 blowout in the 4th inning. It was usually a better choice to just pick a game and stick with it, maybe hopping to a different game between innings.
I really like the idea and maybe it works better in other time zones but on a typical night there are more bad baseball games than there are bad NFL games, especially in the era of tanking.
Yeah, they have a few games, some taking RSN feeds, and some with their own people. That's less important, though, than it is for NBA/NHL channels, because MLB teams have twice as many games as NBA/NHL teams; who in their right mind would tune in to a random Texas-Seattle game when their home team is playing?
deGrom vs Julio Rodriguez and the rest of the baby Mariners? No, I would prefer the Mets, but if it's 4 pm on Sunday and the Mets game is over, I am watching Texas-Seattle for that.
Also happening in Florida……a bill was introduced that would allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit because they ‘want to remove the government’s permission slip’.
AND there will be more suicides...... it's been rather conclusively shown that a gun in the house makes a suicide in that house more likely. Not that it necessarily increases the chances of a suicide attempt, but that it pretty much guarantees that any attempts will be successful.
I heard a stat in passing on the radio, so I didn't catch what the denominator was, but 54% of the gun deaths (total? In one state? Particular age group? Missed that part) were suicides. Not murders, not mass shootings, suicides. And along with that it said that suicide attempts by drugs were only successful something like 3% of the time but using a gun greatly increased the chance of success, and if it was there and ready at hand it made an impulsive decision to kill oneself much more likely to work. So sad.
I coach in Dubai Little League, so assume it’s the same in MLB where you have 3 coaches:
The Bench Coach is responsible for helping the players find their left batting glove, checking they have a cap on when taking the field, reminding them to take their bat when they head to the on-deck circle and logging the game in GameChanger?
At the MLB level, I would assume the bench coach is there to make sure the pranks that arise out of sheer boredom don't lead to any actual injuries. They also have to call the clubhouse attendant to bring a new cooler when a player takes a bat to the one in the dugout after his third strikeout of the day.
I had multiple run-ins with Chris Rufo here in Seattle where he led an anti-homeless campaign. Highly racist, and his wife is quite a prize too. She attacked me for calling him out, we both worked at Amazon at the time and she kept trying to tell me that since we both worked at the same company I should talk to her directly on Chime (Amazon's internal messaging system). Obviously I'm not that stupid. The Wikipedia entry on her is incorrect btw, she was never a 'programmer for AWS', she was a program manager, and lasted about a year. That is not a technical position.
Rufo's background is with the Discovery Institute, the ones who created Intelligent Design and were pushing it into schools until they were laughed out of court in one pivotal lawsuit. Rufo also briefly ran for city council in Seattle but concocted some phony threats as an excuse to drop out.
Inveterate liar, grifter and contemptible human being.
I mean I know the meme but I know good people from Florida. Rufo isn't from Florida, he's from Italy originally, grew up in California and then spent time in Seattle before taking his grift to Florida.
So noted - still, the prosecution rests. You can argue that many (most?) of the worst offenders in the Sunshine State brought their nonsense from other places. What makes the Governor so remarkable (and dangerous) is his willingness to encourage and ride that nonsense to amass and hold on to power.
When I was in college and in a rather different intellectual space, i wrote a few columns for a campus conservative paper a friend started. It was funded by a national conservative organization (we had no funds to print a paper ourselves, but regularly print hundreds of copies we did, somehow), and they flew us to DC for a conference where we convened at the Heritage Foundation, where an organization named F.I.R.E. told us to watch out for liberal bias, and call them if we saw any.
It all seemed innocent at the time, but I can’t help but assume now +/- 40 years old who participated have morphed what at the time I thought was an effort to protect freedom of speech on campus into something far more draconian.
If nothing else, I assume a number of my fellow attendees have ascended to positions of political power, and at a minimum have no interest in interfering with what’s going on in Florida.
Same. Even if they did have a lot in common, any couple with one or two high-pressure jobs involved, especially if there is a lot of traveling, is always going to have a hard time. Glamorous highly-paid jobs don't lessen the issues that much.
Since he wanted a self-sufficient ornament he'd have been better off just getting a cat.
Why the assumption Gisele isn't the same way?
It's my understanding they weren't the typical ultra-rich, have a nanny on staff 24/7 kind of couple. I could totally see Gisele growing tired of doing it all herself (including when Tom's son with Bridget Moynahan was around the house). The word I got was they had a family meeting and agreed retirement was the obvious choice. Then Tom suddenly reverts course without so much as even telling his wife. Gisele is worth more than two times what Tom is so it isn't like she needs his money.
And Also, he has a kid with someone else too, yeah? SO he s used to not living with his children
Stan Kasten was a smarmy dickhead when he was Nats GM - most famously, openly encouraging fans of division rivals like Philly and New York to come to DC if they couldn’t see their favorite team at home. At least he’s consistent in his smarmy dickheadedness?
All that is true, but he did bring my uncle a hot dog once at his seat.
I'm guessing your uncle was a Phillies/Mets fan? Did Stan offer to give him a back rub as well?
Stan Kasten brought us Jim Bowden and Smiley Gonzalez, did he not?
Yes he did. I will say it does feel a little like Ol' Leatherpants Bowden is back, what with all the aged arms being brought to camp to catch what he called "lightning in a bottle."
Tom Brady’s retirement ends an era. He was the last Montreal Expos draftee still playing pro ball.
And yet for some unknown reason, the very same people who deny the Expos history as being part of the Nats' history, are now saying Tom Brady is a "franchise legend" deserving of being in their "ring of honor." Now, I get that many fans are from Virginia, where it's not uncommon to pick and choose the history that gets acknowledged...
I'm a lifelong Virginian, and I'm grateful that for once someone else's owner fucked up so badly that the team had to be moved ***TO*** DC for a change (we're 1-2, baby) ... Thanks for the ballclub, Montreal!
Also - were all those Brady/Expos tributes not mocking/ironic? That's how I read it.
I believe the significant presence of the irony-challenged in the Natmosphere makes that inference unlikely. Just read through the comments on MASN if you need an example.
I'll take your word for it ;)
Some news from the Mets broadcast booths:
- As you might recall, SNY is still owned by the Wilpons. So it's not terribly surprising, but still really frustrating that they can't reach an agreement with Keith Hernandez to bring him back in 2023. They're nickeling and diming a beloved figure and running the risk he starts the season somewhere else. I wonder just how long before Cohen decides to just make Freddy and Jeff an offer they can't refuse since I suspect he wants Keith back too.
- Howie Rose revealed this week that the reason for his frequent breaks from his radio duties is he's been dealing with bladder cancer. He's doing better now, but it's been rough. You can read about it here: https://awfulannouncing.com/mlb/mets-howie-rose-bladder-cancer.html. Wishing Howie all the best as he tries to get back in the swing of things.
I saw that a member of the Eagles - the football team about to play in the Super Bowl, and not the band - was charged with some pretty awful crimes. And was immediately placed on administrative leave. If a player about to be in the biggest game of the year can be told not to play, certainly MLB can implement a similar policy for anyone accused of domestic abuse or sexual assault while the process plays out. But if Khalil Lee were more of a valued prospect, I am sure he'd be in Port St. Lucie in two weeks. (I figure they quietly tell him to stay home but don't make a big deal out of it.)
Mets Federalist beat writer *reports* Mets were pissed off that Keith went on Tucker Carlson's "show."
i love that guy. it's all fake but it's entirely enjoyable!
every aspect of his account is "chef's kiss"
MLB absolutely does employ such an administrative leave for DV investigations. See eg Bauer, discussed today. He was on a rolling seven (?) day leave for most of a year before discipline was imposed (and appealed). Or Ozuna and many (far too many) others since the implementation of the joint MLB MLBPA domestic violence policy a couple of years ago.
Then Lee should have been placed on leave yesterday. Or maybe the second the Mets learned about this, which I think was much earlier than yesterday.
To what purpose? He would still be paid and take a 40 man roster slot. He isn’t with the team now anyway. Wait until spring training camps open before worrying about leave pending an investigation.
Just to make the point that he might not be welcome. And I think any employer ought to do that for this class of crime. (About the only place I am a hardliner.)
Process is important. The more vile the allegations, the more important the process.
Not to downplay the allegations, but the player on the Eagles was a practice squad player who only played in one game this year and didn’t dress for either playoff game. This obviously made it very easy for the Eagles to take the correct stand.
Rather different allegations, but I'm reminded of Eugene Robinson. No, not the political commentator who writes at the Washington Post and elsewhere. But the former 3x pro bowl NFL defensive back for the Falcons and others.
In 1999, Robinson was the recipient of the Bart Starr Award. That is similar to baseball's Roberto Clemente man of the year and was the precursor to the present Walter Payton Award given for off field leadership and high moral character. The award was presented the day before the Super Bowl.
That night, after the ceremony, Robinson was arrested for soliciting an undercover police officer. Oops.
He was released on bail and played in the game the next day. But was torched by the Broncos for a long touchdown early in the contest.
Robinson was also the fool who was caught on camera in the previous Super Bowl mocking the Broncos, while Terrell Davis was running all over them and winning the game. It was a glorious day. Also, fuck Tom Brady with a deflated football.
Apologies for the football diversion.
I vividly remember (as a 15-y.o. Broncos fan) Rod Smith catching that ball and running away from Robinson. I don't think I got the enormity of the situation at the time, just that he'd been arrested, got to play anyway, and probably wished he hadn't.
Forgot all about Eugene Robinson soliciting an undercover cop. Talk about irony. He was a hell of a DB. Who tried to solicit a hooker of course. SMH
i'm wondering if Keith is just such a pain in the A to SNY mgmt that they are making a statement here that "your return is not automatic." it seems that he works when he feels like it - not sure what his contract terms are/were - you see many games where it's Gary and Ron only (and quite a few Gary/Keith only, maybe w/Ron doing Turner games). The dynamic w/3 of them is the best baseball TV there is, and I mean usually who turns in to watch the announcers - in this case I think we can say Mets fans do. You never know what Keith is going to say/do/what his takes are. I think he probably has some problematic takes politically but as long as he leaves them at home I can enjoy the broadcasts. I would imagine if SNY doesn't re-sign him, there are very limited windows for him to appear outside of conservative media. So once the flexing is done, I suspect this will resolve shortly.
I can see the Yankees stealing him from the Mets just to be obnoxious. Happened with Seaver.
Some of his problematic takes *have* made it to the air. One that comes to mind is his rant a number of years ago when the Mets' opponent, I think the Cards, had a female assistant trainer in the dugout.
oh boy. quite the take.
Yankees, for their part, have their own tRumper, in O'Neill but while he doesn't make revealing comments he IS as bad at his job as Collinsworth in the NFL.
O'Neill will do old school stuff with Kay nodding along on how bad "today's game" is. these kids with their stats. I have them muted so often I've prob missed the toxic stuff. Paul the warrior has also been broadcasting from his basement in Ohio during the pandemic, obv with management approval, which tells you some *more* stuff about Levine/Trost/Hal if you didn't already know.
Maybe I'm flattening everything out with time passed but I never really got the sense that O'Neill was a "the game today sucks" guy - I just don't think he adds anything to the broadcast and absolutely mails it in. Also YES should dump him for the basement shit alone. They are really unnecessarily bending over backwards for him.
When Steinbrenner fam decides you're in their stable it's a lifetime ticket. No merit system there.
Padres, IIRC, but that was a long, long time ago. Keith has learned to edit himself, which is good, because I do think a lot of what comes to his mind would get him fired. Of course, moments like "I wasn't talking about the hot dog" will always sneak out, but they're more often golden than not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69GXAZk4jvg
wow. woof!
as I say to this dude at the dog park (guy in his 70s who like me loves playing the horses, and also loves his weed) when he says something with sexual innuendo like we're back in JHS:
"hey, Joel, just because it pops into your head doesn't mean you *have* to say it." same, Keith, same.
He only wants to work certain games, is the issue (I imagine - I'm not in the room). He was down to 100 games last year, and we know he hates doing Phillies games for the poor fundies, so I imagine he's trying to cut it back to half the season and the Wilpains are balking at that. I do very much wish they'd go away already.
The Cardinals missed an opportunity here.
In fairness, we don't really know whether it's SNY or Hernandez who is the obstacle in his contract. For all we know Hernandez is expecting raise every year, and perhaps the looming financial struggles of RSNs makes that no longer possible. Or maybe he just wants more off days than he's had, and he's gotten a lot in the past. He may have reached the age that if he's going to continue working, it'll be on his terms or he'll just retire.
If it was only SNY being unreasonable, presumably they'd have been unreasonable on Ron Darling and Gary Cohen's contracts too. And yet those two were able to reach an agreement.
In any case involving money and the Wilpons, it's fair to assume the Wilpons are at fault. Though that doesn't mean Keith isn't digging in, too.
Baseball Gods are prob fine w Mets doing LGM super bowl commercials.
I feel like our host is going out of his way to criticize the Dodgers for making the right decision with the rapist. He was on paid (per mandatory arbitration award) leave and not actively representing the club. I strongly suspect they waited until the last minute to desperately try to trade him and only lose 99.9% of the money rather than all of it. A corporate entity taking two weeks to make and effectuate a seven figure decision is bog standard.
And that conversation? Dollars to donuts it was:
Dodger Exec: “We would much rather add a recent Cy Young winner with electric stuff to our rotation than light a giant pile of cash on fire. Unfortunately for both of us, you are such a vile jackwagon that we have to pick option 2.”
Bauer: “They wanted me!”
The bare minimum is to comply with the terms of the arbitrator's final decision: an unpaid suspension that ends on a date certain and eligible to continue to play. Instead, they released him, eating something like $26M. They had twenty-six million reasons, not including his actual playing ability, to chose not to do that.
That they did what I believe to be the right thing, but not as quickly as you'd like, is a point in their favor in my ledger.
Adding: it is exactly because Bauer is such a jackwagon that I am glad that the league and team went through every administrative step in the process and afforded him the opportunity to plead his case and / or make amends. There is a lot of danger in deciding that someone is so reprehensible that they aren’t entitled to due process.
Also, while my understanding is that with Bauer, the money was already determined and as long as they cut him he wouldn’t get paid anymore, I think there is a strong argument to make that a team minimizing what they pay a horrible person is a good thing.
The White Sox are being pilloried on local radio for not having immediately released Mike Clevinger after the domestic violence allegations against him, and it’s been suggested that they should be happy to eat the $12M they owe him for the sake of cutting all ties immediately. While I don’t doubt their reasoning is selfish, if they’re able to recoup some of that money then that means a bona fide piece of human garbage gets less money so I’d consider that a good thing.
Agree. This business about immediately suspending a player has ramifications. There have been instances of false allegations in the past. Aside from the human element of heated domestic issues having a lot of weird dynamics, the pivot toward gambling gives a crooked gambler every incentive to recruit a 'victim' the day before a big game. Of course it's illegal, but what's the risk/reward balance?
I don't have an answer for what the proper level of protections for players should be, but there has to be some sort of process.
I don't have THE answer, but AN answer is to follow the procedures that are set out in the MLB-MLBPA Joint Agreement on Domestic Violence. Perfect? Of course not. And the victim is not a party to that process. But it seems to me to be a reasonable starting place.
The link is to the 2018 one, but IIRC, it was adopted in full without modification in the 2022 CBA. http://content.mlb.com/documents/2/9/2/296982292/Major_League_Player_Joint_DV_SA_CA_Policy_English_2018.pdf
I'd also note for the folks complaining that the Dodgers didn't take earlier action or the Mets in the situation that just came to light that the agreement expressly provides that the initial disciplinary process belongs to the league and union and that a club may impose discipline only in limited circumstances that are set out on page 5.
What's happening in Florida scares the crap out of me. Apparently the Democratic party in Florida is a mess, partially due to the gerrymandering that has left it completely impotent, so there is no organized opposition with any power to resist DeSantis. It's Germany in 1933 down there. A mass boycott of spring training, OrlandoWorld and spring break might have some effect, but that's never going to happen. The Boomers sitting in God's Waiting Room don't give a rip about education because they got theirs so the hell with everyone else, and besides, Ron speaks for their racism and transphobia. The immediacy of his desired results trumps (pun intended) the long-term disaster that Florida is facing.
The main drivers of Florida tourism position themselves as LGBTQ+ allies and beacons of inclusivity. Disney, airlines, hotels, cruise ships ... their silence is deafening. I have friends that live in that state and have been suggesting they leave for years, but there's only so much I can do.
Then you have the other side that is also silent but Desantis is there guy: US Sugar, Monsanto, Mozaic, The Timber companies, and the Ranchers. Those folks control the state, tourism will always be good because most people don't pick their vacations based on state politics. Plus after Disney and the Reddy Creek thing no one wants to say anything critical about Desantis any more
Tourism is the largest contributor to the GDP of Florida and it is growing faster than agriculture. I realize nobody wants to be critical of the governor but there are plenty of other ways to get the word out.
Born and raised in Florida and still living here. I hope Desantis runs for president and gets the hell out of here. Although I think the legislature is going to repeal the law that says you must relinquish your office if you run for a different position. He was elected the first time by less than 30k votes. I knew when he won by 1.5 million it would go to his head. He is moving our state to crazy land because he is even more to the right than the republican legislature. I mean he re gerrymandered the voting districts in the because the Legislature didn't gerrymander it enough to his liking. His antics play well to the particular breed of old folks here now. The key is you have to be wealthy to retire here this days, that wasn't always the case. As much as he has "succeeded" here, I don't think it will play well on a national level. I can't wait to see him against some real competition. I also want some one to tell him that 2009 called and wants it's word back: woke.
You would still think that there's SOMEONE in the Democrats down there that would be grabbing the bullhorn and raising the hue and cry.
I'll tell you, I finished my Ph. D just in time for the entire industry to collapse, and as a historian, watching all this happen again is giving me serious Maginot Line vibes...
The Period Monitoring Police will also serve as an alert system for any potential pregnancies and abortions, as well as harassing trans people. It's a bigotry and misogyny two-fer!
I read something that put a lot of the blame for their recent awfulness on them never having a reckoning after WWII in the same way Germany did. They got off lightly in that sense and their fascists could position themselves in the same way the Confederates did on the US.
Part of it is that, against the pure evil of Hitler and the dehumanization of the Japanese (both in foreign and domestic propaganda), Mussolini is easy to frame as the buffoon trying to play in the deep end of the pool and just splashing around. But we know he was the one who essentially created the fascist playbook that is still being followed today.
Similar to how in the US it's easy to mock white supremists for the white hoods and silly titles while ignoring the ways they were able to recruit and infiltrate all throughout society and government and thus gain power and influence far beyond their actual numbers.
exactly. I try to emphasize to my friends that it’s incredibly important to take your enemy seriously for this reason
stuff like characterizing Trump or Bush (or Berlusconi, or, recently in a play I despised, Hoover) as dumb buffoons with backwards thinking *helps* them, as it makes them appear entertaining or harmless
they understand power structures and have reasons for hating non-men/minorities/queer people and its about consolidating power and they know that. they are acting strategically. don’t forget that for a second
Nailed it. They look like clowns and buffoons to us because we aren't their target audience. I was watching a program and it was funny how Mussolini had those weird facial expressions on a head shaped like a potato, and Hitler was a short little weirdo with a silly mustache and they both looked absolutely ridiculous, but it didn't stop either of them from murdering on an enormous scale.
somewhat… we also did string up Mussollini and stuff. the antifa in Italy were some brave souls. the problem was mainly in the 60’s and 70’s people got so scared of becoming a communist country that they handed the reigns back to the racists. Germany did the division thing and had a longer, more painful reckoning
the concept of Italy was a imperialist construction that easily became a fascist one. I agree that people who really care about capital “I” Italy are the worst.
but there are lots of lovely welcoming people in their various regions that are welcoming and are actively hostile to borders, nationhood, etc that I’d like to stick up for :)
I've really grown to hate how people view nations as a static thing rather than transitory local governments ruling over multi-ethnic societies. Some chosen, some imposed.
This latest hubbub about Italy's birthrates has me responding "What is an Italian?" which most people consider self-evident because they know almost nothing about the region currently known as Italy. I mean technically I'm "Italian" but really 163 years ago my family lived in The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, prior to that numerous other arrangements, and ethnically they are a mix of Latin cultures currently residing in Italy, Greeks, Persians and a bit of north African.
Which of course are themselves migratory mixtures from other groups, ethnicities and tribes. And so on, all the way back to Africa.
I blame 23andMe and the other cheap genetic testing companies for making this less clear, it was an opportunity to present history more realistically but instead it's reinforced the poor understanding school gave us.
My ex-father in law's family were Italian immigrants from Piemonte. They never, ever cared about Italy with a capital "I." Their land of origin was Piemonte and, if anything, they felt more German/Austrian than Italian, and everyone from Milan and points south were a bunch of crazy people who adorably tried to govern as if Italy were a country as opposed to a temporary state of being.
Of course, my ex-father-in-law's uncle Celso, who never came to America, was a Fascist until the exact point during the war when it was no longer a good thing to be, so I take a lot of what they used to tell me with a healthy grain of salt.
if you ask my family if they’re Italian they say no, they’re Florentine. the joke is that Italy only exists when the soccer team plays
Yup, my family immigrated from Sicily and absolutely did not consider themselves Italian. People conflate Italy with the Roman Empire, but Italy as a single nation really only came into existence in 1863 I believe and previously was several different nations/states.
Exactly, Lorenzo!
So Italy only exists in qualifiers?
Our culture does everything it can to discourage birth rates. Women almost always face material penalties for having kids during their prime educational/career years.
Depends on the workplace.
Assuming the high schoolers tell the truth when questioned on their periods. And when you'd be harassed for being trans or pregnant, why would you? Still, the fact that it will be ineffective doesn't make it any less reprehensible.
Yeah, plus often stress makes them really irregular. Skipping one entirely isn't unusual.
But it's not like athletic competition can cause stress in young people, right?
Or final exams. Or difficulties at home. Or annoying boyfriends or girlfriends.
Haha, clearly being a teen is easy.
And over-training, especially with weight-loss goals, is a known cause of amennorhea in female athletes.
So can being an adolescent. It's common for tweens to have irregular periods.
Oh I know that, I was never, EVER predictable, ever ... until now when I'm waiting for menopause it's like clockwork, which just makes me so mad every time that it hasn't stopped yet.
The point of asking is that if one is later found to be trans they can then charge them with a crime.
I don't have any girls, but my oldest is a freshman and literally cannot tell me what time his classes begin and end (he's a bit of a himbo, though, God love him). Expecting girls that age to know the frequency and duration of their periods might be asking a bit much.
I assume the effect will be to push girls out of high school sports. Yeah, we personally tracked our periods because we needed to know when to carry supplies. But unless teenagers have changed a lot recently I can't imagine they'd want to share that information with anyone--especially if it could lead to a criminal investigation.
Maybe that's part of the plan, maybe it's just a side effect.
I suggest that we all bombard whatever social media and e-mail accounts that the State of Florida and the Governor's Office have with our fake answers to those survey question.
"When did you have your first period?" 243 B.C.E. - don't remember the exact date.
"When did you have your most recent period?" - Purple.
It's been a hundred years since I played high school sports, but that monitoring is W I L D. Really scary.
On DeSantis, hopefully the youth of America will wisely turn out in '24 to keep him from advancing his agenda nationally. Seemed to work last time, so I remain hopeful.
On Brady, one interesting tidbit I read in commentary yesterday was that his playing again last year could have been a strategy to keep Gisele from getting any of his Fox TV $$, meaning the divorce would have happened whether he played or not and wasn't caused by him going back to play. Because that'd kick the can down the road post-divorce on the start of that deal. Who knows though? Like you said Craig, none of us ever know what's going on w/someone else like that. And it's not really our business. But, if that was indeed the case, a shrewd (i think) business move on his part, and then having to go thru a terrible season (he looked miserable) with Todd "I couldn't coach the Jets but here I am with the GOAT and I'm still terrible" Bowles and all the funsies that went on down in DeSantisVille USA. Now that organization is literally shredded. And you wonder how in God's name will he resist the urge to go to SF and carry the 49ers over the line next year after a few weeks of rest. I don't think too many of us believe he's done.
With Phil's grim news this AM of 6 more weeks of winter, at least theoretically, at least we can celebrate only a few more weeks until some actual baseball news/action.
More likely he didn't know what else to do with himself. He's certainly not the first professional athlete who had a difficult time.coming to terms with retirement.
I think that's why Randy Johnson being a photographer impresses me more. He found a whole other career that he seems to enjoy and is completely different than the physical skills used to pitch.
Doesn't even have to be sports. I'm pretty sure we all know people who retired from a career they enjoyed, even at a late age, but had no hobbies and had no idea what to do with their days when they weren't working.
I've noticed managers are often lost like that. So they take to managing a spouse and their kids and wind up doing things like puttering around the house and measuring the amount of sediment they flush out of a water heater and wondering if it means anything that the dry weight of it is more this year than it was last year, did the water quality change going into their house?
Hypothetically of course. 😄
Oh me too. I have hobbies that I'd love to have more time with instead of evenings and weekends. My dad had an adjustment period when he had to really register that if he wanted to clean out the garage, he didn't have to rush to get it done in two days before he went back to work. Once he actually got used to being retired (it took him a couple months I think) he got involved with volunteering and had time to garden and do more woodworking and stained glass and make things for his grandkids and now he doesn't know when he found time to work! That's what I hope for in my retirement. I'll never be able to afford to travel all over the world but being able to do my own things on my own schedule would be phenomenal.
Looking at the Unit trying to contort his enormous body into small spaces in order to get the shot is hilarious. More power to him!
Setting aside the built in sexism (other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?) it is also very uninformed on the nature of alimony and property settlement. "After acquired assets" or things that a spouse receives after a separation are often included in the distribution if they are reasonably foreseeable during the existence of the marriage.
(That was actually a point that was expressly litigated in the one player divorce I was involved in back in the 1990s. The player signed a FA contract shortly after the settlement agreement was finalized; we successfully argued that it was easily foreseeable, in part, because the player had just lead his league in Hits.)
Not that kind of lawyer, but I seem to remember in Community pProperty class that the assets are separate when one party decides that they are never reconciling, so a settlement agreement or finalized divorce are not prerequisite to excluding income from alimony. I don’t think it has any bearing on child support.
On Brady carrying the 49ers over the line, for what it's worth he had the 20th best QB rating last season. #1 was Brock Purdy. Now to be sure a lot of that was due to the coaching and systems they were operating under. Still, it's kind of a hard sell to say Brady would be an upgrade.
Old QBs seem to just fall off a cliff at some point once the arm strength goes. Peyton Manning did the same thing following a rather strong penultimate season.
i think he'd be an upgrade over Purdy not playing at all, which seems likely with his UCL tear. And the uncertainty over Lance's status as well. Certainly at his age/stage he'd be a one year fill-in.
I just don't get how a team that signed one QB to a big contract and had two really good replacements is in a place that it might move on from all three. Something doesn't add up.
Staten Island Chuck predicted an early spring for the eighth year running. Though I suspect that he just looked at the forecast and utter lack of snow hereabouts.
I'm always amazed at how someone with the resources to buy anything (anyone?) he wants would want more. Already have a Learjet - maybe you should have a personal A330. I certainly know that lots of people have the fixation because I see it everywhere, but it just seems so alien and stressful.
Doesn't Gisele make more money than Tom?
I'm not sure I buy the Fox TV angle. She's worth almost double that of Brady (400M vs 250M)
They pay models that much now? (I really don't know much about her.)
The models at the top are all paid very well. Of course, she's always been one of the highest paid and has her hands in a lot of endeavors.
Bravo to the Dead Milkmen reference.
Also, we changed our cable package recently to save a little bit of money. We now don’t have MLB Network. I do watch Quick Pitch at times but I do not expect to miss it as most their programming and on-air personalities are horrible
While it is true declining populations disrupt labor, pension systems, and economic growth, it's also true that any system that depends on perpetual population growth is ultimately unsustainable. While immigration could buy some time for the unsustainable to continue, in the end it's still a Ponzi scheme*.
* In deference to Simon, I'll acknowledge that it is not truly a Ponzi scheme by definition. I only meant that it requires an ever growing number of new participants to support the past participants, like a Ponzi scheme requires, and thus can't continue forever.
That line of thinking has always been so confusing to me given that the global population has the earth's resources already stretched to their absolute limits. It seems like we'd want that rubber band to snap back, at least a little. Of course, as someone who was recently almost a young person, I've realized in the past decade or so that basically every politic decision/conversation is centered around absolutely maximizing the next decade and assuming the world will end before the bill comes due
I’m not smart enough to know if humanity is stretching resources to their absolute limits. Certainly people are saying so. Otoh, people have been predicting that sort of thing for over 100 years—every billion citizens caused the same sort of hand-wringing we see today, but yet the human race is better fed and generally freer from violence than ever before.
There probably is a limit to the number of humans, but is it 8-9 billion or 20 or 30? I doubt anyone really knows.
The only way to know is to realize it when it is too late. So, what do you do? Underestimate the Earth's capacity or ignore the evidence that we are there already?
Is this better/different evidence than people pointed to saying that the Earth couldn’t possibly support 2 billion people?
How do you keep the population low? Through Force?
Helping to improve the conditions of developing nations? That seems to stem population growth without forcing anything on anyone. And improves quality of life. Seems win win to me.
You miss the point. Supporting a population for even several generations does not mean the resources necessary to have done that are sustainable. You can talk about how earlier estimates were tied to incorrect predictions of mass starvation (that actually does exist, of course) and the like, but many many experts believe that the biggest effects will be felt in 50 to 100 years. How do YOU propose to deal with the uncontroverted evidence of resource depletion, mass extinctions, polution, etc? It is a silly argument to claim there must be no problem if the alarmists can't give you a satisfactory solution.
So that suggests Social Security is a Ponzi scheme at some level. Which I don't think is so, but I am not an economist.
According to this article, SS is sort of, but not technically, a Ponzi scheme:
https://digitaledition.investmentnews.com/articles/social-security-may-not-be-a-ponzi-scheme-but-it-sure-acts-like-one
But do I trust the assessment of a financial advisor who might be covertly suggesting we just privatize Social Security?
You don't have to trust them, you only need understand how SS works. The payroll taxes being collected from our family today are being paid out, today, to my parents and my wife's parents and the rest of that generation. In a couple of decades, my son's payroll taxes will go to my generation. Rinse. Repeat.
It's not a 401(k) with your name on a pool of money. It's money goes in, money goes out. When fewer workers are supporting more retirees, something has to give.
Still, SS admittedly doesn't meet the full definition of a Ponzi scheme, even if it does have the constant need for new investors to pay off old investors.
SSI has the guardrails of being able to control when and how much the payouts are.
I definitely feel SS is a pseudo ponzi scheme. Paper's point with respect to robbing one generations wealth to pay another hits the nail on the proverbial head for me.
I was kind of surprised to see so much angst in my feeds from folks lamenting the MLB Network/YouTube thing. Aside from their embarrassingly too-infrequent documentaries, is there any reason to watch that channel? The original programming is mostly…not good. Is there something I’m missing?
As I said yesterday, if they would go all in on a RedZone-type nightly whiparound show (and keep the Harold Reynolds/Al Leiter/etc. nonsense to a minimum, preferably zero) I'd likely have it on every night. I really like Quick Pitch and wouldn't mind catching the live show.
I think they tried that last season, although it may have been part of the MLB streaming package rather than MLB Network. Living on the west coast, it really didn't work for me. By the time I would turn it on, there might only be 2 or 3 games going and at least one of them would be a 8-2 blowout in the 4th inning. It was usually a better choice to just pick a game and stick with it, maybe hopping to a different game between innings.
I really like the idea and maybe it works better in other time zones but on a typical night there are more bad baseball games than there are bad NFL games, especially in the era of tanking.
Fair. But here in DC there is usually a bad baseball game on every night. HEY YO
I think FS1 does a whiparound type of show a lot of nights, I never really watched it though so I don't know how good it is or if they still do it
Some games, I think? Or is only the NBA that has games on its channel frequently?
Yeah, they have a few games, some taking RSN feeds, and some with their own people. That's less important, though, than it is for NBA/NHL channels, because MLB teams have twice as many games as NBA/NHL teams; who in their right mind would tune in to a random Texas-Seattle game when their home team is playing?
deGrom vs Julio Rodriguez and the rest of the baby Mariners? No, I would prefer the Mets, but if it's 4 pm on Sunday and the Mets game is over, I am watching Texas-Seattle for that.
Also happening in Florida……a bill was introduced that would allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit because they ‘want to remove the government’s permission slip’.
They already passed that here in Ohio.
Crazy - traffic incidents are going to turn into shootouts.
Crazy - MORE traffic incidents are going to turn into shootouts.
fixed that for you. Last week a person shot at a cop in a road rage incident.
AND there will be more suicides...... it's been rather conclusively shown that a gun in the house makes a suicide in that house more likely. Not that it necessarily increases the chances of a suicide attempt, but that it pretty much guarantees that any attempts will be successful.
I heard a stat in passing on the radio, so I didn't catch what the denominator was, but 54% of the gun deaths (total? In one state? Particular age group? Missed that part) were suicides. Not murders, not mass shootings, suicides. And along with that it said that suicide attempts by drugs were only successful something like 3% of the time but using a gun greatly increased the chance of success, and if it was there and ready at hand it made an impulsive decision to kill oneself much more likely to work. So sad.
I coach in Dubai Little League, so assume it’s the same in MLB where you have 3 coaches:
The Bench Coach is responsible for helping the players find their left batting glove, checking they have a cap on when taking the field, reminding them to take their bat when they head to the on-deck circle and logging the game in GameChanger?
At the MLB level, I would assume the bench coach is there to make sure the pranks that arise out of sheer boredom don't lead to any actual injuries. They also have to call the clubhouse attendant to bring a new cooler when a player takes a bat to the one in the dugout after his third strikeout of the day.
That makes sense.
Do you know which coach is responsible for stopping the MLB players parents bringing in [redacted] 12" sandwiches into the dugout in the 3rd inning?
WHo is responsible for telling the players to pay attention to the game and stop eating if not the bench coach?
I had multiple run-ins with Chris Rufo here in Seattle where he led an anti-homeless campaign. Highly racist, and his wife is quite a prize too. She attacked me for calling him out, we both worked at Amazon at the time and she kept trying to tell me that since we both worked at the same company I should talk to her directly on Chime (Amazon's internal messaging system). Obviously I'm not that stupid. The Wikipedia entry on her is incorrect btw, she was never a 'programmer for AWS', she was a program manager, and lasted about a year. That is not a technical position.
Rufo's background is with the Discovery Institute, the ones who created Intelligent Design and were pushing it into schools until they were laughed out of court in one pivotal lawsuit. Rufo also briefly ran for city council in Seattle but concocted some phony threats as an excuse to drop out.
Inveterate liar, grifter and contemptible human being.
"Inveterate liar, grifter and contemptible human being."
Isn't that included in the standard definition of Florida Man?
I mean I know the meme but I know good people from Florida. Rufo isn't from Florida, he's from Italy originally, grew up in California and then spent time in Seattle before taking his grift to Florida.
So noted - still, the prosecution rests. You can argue that many (most?) of the worst offenders in the Sunshine State brought their nonsense from other places. What makes the Governor so remarkable (and dangerous) is his willingness to encourage and ride that nonsense to amass and hold on to power.
TIm Eyman but smarter is not a high bar
At least he's not stealing office furniture I guess...
When I was in college and in a rather different intellectual space, i wrote a few columns for a campus conservative paper a friend started. It was funded by a national conservative organization (we had no funds to print a paper ourselves, but regularly print hundreds of copies we did, somehow), and they flew us to DC for a conference where we convened at the Heritage Foundation, where an organization named F.I.R.E. told us to watch out for liberal bias, and call them if we saw any.
It all seemed innocent at the time, but I can’t help but assume now +/- 40 years old who participated have morphed what at the time I thought was an effort to protect freedom of speech on campus into something far more draconian.
If nothing else, I assume a number of my fellow attendees have ascended to positions of political power, and at a minimum have no interest in interfering with what’s going on in Florida.
I was VP of College Republicans. The President is now a Republican State Senator in NY.