gehringer_2

apparently Kimbrel has done this before - in particular in extra inning games where he preferred the man on 3rd where he couldn't steal signs. Of course he could just use PitchCom....

It so reassuring to know we have such small minded, venal men running the GOP.

Self inflicted wounds IMO. Matt knows baseball, he could have acted and talked like he knows baseball and he might have made it work - at least better than he has done. When all Shep does is play the fool to the ex-player, you never get an actual discussion or counterpoint view on anything - and when the ex-player has nothing to offer but stock phrase platitudes like Monroe, you don't get very good baseball analysis. Maybe it was noble of him to take on the mantel of trying to make poor to mediocre color guys look better, but his first responsibility was to the listener, not his partners.

well, this does surprise me. I figured McCarthy would have his name put back into nomination and we see January all over again, but apparently not. McCarthy will not run for his old gig

Yup - Andy is a 'Natural'

And of course, just another example of: ETTD.

I wonder if Gaetz actually thought McCarthy would swing a deal with the Dems to keep the Speakership which would have allowed Gaetz to just keep agitating, basically cost free. Hard to see with McCarthy out how the radical wing does not end up dis-empowered. Do they think they can come with a guy that will cede them even more than McCarthy did?

I see no-one has bought the clerk a new pencil since the 1st set of speaker votes - she's still using that stub.

Stupid rules. Why do they still do voice roll-calls when they have an electronic vote board? Whatever - the vote begins.

He wants to force the Judge to put him in jail. But like most bets Trump makes, he will lose this one. I hope they give him a haircut when they hand him his orange jumper.

You know, if they replaced the Capitol dome with big turbine spun by the rising hot air, they'd make a huge dent in the D.C.'s carbon generation. But since the GOP doesn't believe in climate change, another good idea is going to go to waste.

So now we get an hour of hot air?

10 GOP nays on the motion to table already. Should be enough appear to be no Dem crossovers.

Shep made a conscious decision to maintain a position of complete intellectual inferiority to his color ex-player. There may a certain kind journalistic truth in that, but it meant he would never engage his partner as an equal, and that made for a terrible broadcast in the end. Plus the fact that he simply wasn't that good technically - too much mangled syntax, losing track of what was going on, etc. Shep has a good voice, but that was about his only virtue. And of course almost any one in the booth would have suffered for the absolutely terrible overall production by Bally. Johnny Kane especially had descended into some kind of drooling idiocy that never should have been allowed within 100 meters of an IP feed.

About as surprising as the Sun rising in the East. If we can assume Harris is generally going to demand a higher level of performance/accountability than Al did, there was no way that broadcast was not going to be re-constituted.

Yup. The calculus the Dems have to do is how do you get out of the girdlock once you let it start, who gets blamed for it, and what is the likelihood that if the GOP does manage to come to a resolution by itself, it's any better than the status quo ante. None of those answers are very clear. In a rational world, after a dozen or so more inconclusive Speaker votes, a dozen or so Repubs in blue districts would cut a deal with Jeffries, change parties and simply flip the House. But it's a measure of the lack of intellectual imagination that Repubs just can't make the break. The Tribal Identity trumps all logical analysis. Just like all the other never Trumpers who just can't bring themselves to leave the GOP even though this GOP long ago left them.

If they considered Keith a 3B, then he wasn't excluded, he was just beaten out (barely) by Coby Mayo, who also had a big year.

who knows if Jeffries has the kind of skill over his caucus that Pelosi did, but the Dems can't let McCarthy stay without getting something, especially the acknowledgement - because the atmospherics do matter. It would be a huge unforced error to let him stay for free. And especially after he was so ungracious after the CR vote as to go out call the Dems obstructionist. Plus in reality McCarthy is so untrustworthy that anything he pledges is worthless anyway. That's the one thing Gaetz is correct about!

sure

He would probably get bored with it and be completely ineffective but totally obstructionist. OTOH, better there than the WH? Of course Trump would demand to be both.

well, if that's the case, they have no-one but themselves to blame if they let up. The snap could easily have come before the clock ran down, they had to be ready for a play until they heard the whistle.

In terms of governance, the only concession the Dems should demand for McCarthy to keep his job is an end to the Hastert rule (and a pledge neither party will ever bring it back). If something has majority support, it passes, regardless if it's with a minority of the majority party. That rule has done more to screw up US governance than any other single thing besides maybe Citizen's United and corporate campaign money.

I think the more time that goes by, the more Dems will remember all the reasons they don't care if McCarthy goes down. If Gaetz had gotten his vote immediately after the deal there might have been enough good feeling about the deal made for Dems to think about saving him. I think that's already fading. Of course it still hinges as much on what the Dems can see as the outcome after a McCarthy 'vacation.' (That is what you get if you are 'vacated', amirite? )

One of the issues for Faedo was that he had a problem with blister development when he threw a lot of pitches. That might have been part of the motivation to move him off starting. He is having minor corrective surgery on a nail to try and fix it. https://www.mlb.com/world-baseball-classic/news/tigers-injuries-and-roster-moves?sf103584339=1

I was bummed Corcoran didn't pan out. For about 10 minutes I thought we had something there.