130 Comments

Kyle Schwarber went hitless yesterday. Might be time for the Nats to cut their losses and move on.

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It’s impossible to read this story and not come away believing that Bauer is a violent and dangerous person with a disturbing lack of concern for boundaries or the well being of others.

**confirming suspicions of Cleveland fans who tolerated his antics for most of a decade**

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McNamara & Rumsfeld, the Sons of Bitches Reunion Tour.

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I've always loved how Yo La Tengo turned the summer of 2001 into a love song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq4h_q4jFdk

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I saw a number of men defending Bauer with the "she agreed to rough sex" argument (with a few "we've all been there" sentiments which, I'm like, what?). Then the details emerged and I continued to see those thoughts expressed and I genuinely am wondering that - short of having it in writing - can a person actually consent to unconscious sex?

I'm big on "allegations need to be sorted out" before criminal punishment, but the Dodgers could just DFA him at any time and basically dare another team to pick him up, couldn't they? I can't remember how his contract is structured but I know he wanted the freedom to choose year by year who he plays for.

Also: Cubs are swooning just in time to turn into sellers rather than buyers. The Ricketts must be downright giddy about it.

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I saw Van Halen during the Obama administration at Capital One Arena (or whatever it was called). Only time I ever saw them live, DLR was the singer, and I came away thinking he'd lost his fastball, his curve, and his slider, because he was basically late career Sinatra with forgetting and making up lyrics.

Then I watched today's video, and I guess he was always like that?

Fair Warning is the best Van Halen album. Change my mind.

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On the lighter side … I stumbled across this somewhat self-congratulatory article yesterday that gets into Ted Templeton’s efforts to sign and promote Van Halen, along with his concerns about DLR’s shortcomings as a singer. Spoiler: His singing ability (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view) wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/van-halen-ted-templeman/?fbclid=IwAR2m_BLl7Y1A-1o1WLv48X4LOSZw5Iriy-on2hl_43UbCH6RH88GHhiW0GQ

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DLR must have hoovered up all the coke in California before hitting the stage there.

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In the Bauer section when Craig talks about the ‘allegation’ it says 2 incidents. Were they during one encounter ? Or did it happen on 2 different occasions ?

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I spent 6th-12th grade, that coincides with the DLR era, living in places that a band like Van Halen would never visit. So I never saw the classic line up, but I did see Van Hagar twice, and Sammy holds his own as a frontman.

Sammy's book is excellent. He's a smart guy for a high school dropout, or maybe just smart enough to take good advice. He started diversifying his income stream early and at one point owned the 2nd largest fire alarm company in CA - long before he got into the tequila game. Dave's book is a stream of consciousness disaster. Or totally on brand, depending on your point of view.

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Mets be Mets but I'm always happy for Bobby Bonilla on his payday! Good call by his agent!

It'd be cool if they had him throw out the 1st pitch tomorrow and gave him his check on the way off the field!

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The Montgomery County DA who promised Cosby immunity and said there wasn't enough to prosecute him back in 2004 was the same jabroni who defended Trump in his second impeachment, and is a deeply, deeply unpopular dude locally who only got to where he was because of his name. He has gotten smoked in local election after local election for years, and there were whispers that the reason he took the Trump case was because he had visions of running for PA governor in a few years and wanted to get the Trump rub.

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Before I made the move to WI, I lived in a basic house with a fenced yard in a basic neighborhood in S Minneapolis with a wife and two big rescue dogs, which we named Rumsfeld and Cheney.

We didn't have much for money, but we had the luxury of screaming out the back door "Get out of the fucking compost, Rumsfeld, you bastard!"

(Yes, they were neutered.)

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I don’t think most of the mockery of Bonilla’s deal is the deferred comp, pretty sure it is the structure. Like, the 8% fixed rate and the Wilpon’s belief that an obvious Ponzi scheme would never stop *are* why people mock the deal. Scherzer’s deal takes his $30MM AAV and pays it out at $15MM/year over 14 years, which is basically half his salary deferred interest-free, 325 basis points below the prime rate in January 2015. Had the Wilpons gotten 325 bp under prime and had the same deferral and payout periods, they’d be paying him around $550k/year and nobody would really care about the deferrals either.

As for Cosby, the problem I have seen people raise here is there is no contemporaneous evidence that there was an immunization given in exchange for testimony, and when it first was alleged ten years later, both Bruce Castor and Cosby’s team had reason to claim an agreement existed after the fact. The PA Supreme Court appears to have taken Castor at his word despite having reason to believe he was an unreliable narrator.

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Hello, folks, and greetings from hell!

Satan was so pleased with my work on Earth that he allowed me to post comments online from the grave, like my pal Herman Cain. He actually walked me (over hot coals with a pitch fork poking me in the ass) through the process to get me started.

Anyway, I must say that I am tickled and delighted to see so many MAGA/GQP folks celebrating my life and honoring my work ever since I descended into the fiery pits yesterday. It really hurt my feelings when Trump came along and those folks suddenly pretended they were against my crowning achievements - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - all along. I have many fond memories of these folks telling anyone who didn't fully embrace sending our troops to die, or killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, that they "hate America" and "hate the troops".

So it really pleases me that the MAGA/GQP world came around on me and decided I was good and honorable after all. It really makes me appreciate their ability to have contradictory beliefs on any single topic, depending on what suits them best at the moment.

Peace!

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Three totally unrelated comments:

-- The work of The Athletic, particularly Katie Streng, on these important stories has been very impressive.

-- As an appellate criminal defense attorney, the only potential appellate issue I saw in the Cosby case was the one that carried the day. The appellate attorney for Cosby is a former colleague of mine, and her Instagram stories had a lot of pictures of her and her associates with the newly freed Cosby, and yes, that was really weird.

-- I never saw VH, but I saw DLR when he was touring his third solo album, which was a total flop. He did a few tunes off of that, and the rest of the show was a jukebox, with all of his best known solo songs and a ton of great Van Halen tunes. He did Vegas-y shtick, he had costume changes, and roadies rode him threw a crowd on a surfboard during "California Girls". Whatever his limitations, he knows a good hook and is a total entertainer.

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