chasfh

@Dan Gilmore Still cost me a quart of oil every 100 miles either way.

Sounds like when they said Internet service would be too cheap to meter. They're partly right: it is too cheap a commodity for them to charge based on usage, but that doesn't mean they don't charge a high price as the market rate for you to get it in the first place. Andreessen obviously knows this and thus couldn't possibly be more disingenuous than he is striving to be here.

I also don't respect when anyone vaingloriously guilts people into thanking them for their service and/or shutting the hell up about whatever by highlighting sacrifices they say they endured so other people don't have to do it. There's a passage in Matthew about this very thing, which you'll hear in Ash Wednesday services: "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full." Ex-mils who guilt others about their own stint are receiving their reward in full whenever they do that.

You gotta admit Mariners are a kind of darling of the baseball media, perhaps partly because of its location in the beautiful PNW, perhaps also because they had so many great Hall of Famers pass through (A-Rod, Edgar Martinez, Randy Johnson, KGJr, Ichiro, and King Felix might should be). Also, many people think they are way overdue for a pennant so they are a sentimental favorite, like the Lions were this year. Therefore, they get talked about in the national baseball media a lot, so I would definitely count them among the Next Six franchises.

1973 Chevy Vega. It was a ripoff at $850 in 1978. Had to put in a quart of oil every hundred miles or so, because it had faulty valve cover seals. It got so I had to buy motor oil by the case and keep it in the hatchback.

Ironically, if Skubal wins the Cy Young this year, or at least gets bunches of votes for it, that might slam the door on our being able to sign him long term anyway.

I don't think the Astros can sign Bregman since they let him walk, so I think there might be some bad blood there. But if they could and would sign Bregman, sure, I would do the deal, and the Astros might be talked into it on those terms. They have no one decent for RF that I can see.

It’s easier to pad on top of and then skim off a flight costing taxpaying suckers hundreds of thousands of dollars than it is to do the same to a flight costing $8,577.

OK, now I get Trump’s interest in no taxes on tips. https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/employer-payroll-tax-obligations-for-tipped-employees

Also, they can’t build houses if all the people with the hands to build them are deported.

I wonder how many of this kind of movie ideas the Trump administration will successfully thwart, using harassment and threats of investigations and IRS audits of studios and production companies? That would be one way to MAGAtize Hollywood.

Also, “African Americans”? Too woke a phrase. I’m sure Trump can come up with another word for them and mandate its use via some proclamation.

Never Episcopalian. Too close to Catholic. Assembly o’ God. There’s your state church.

Trump’s CIA is now embracing the lab leak story? You don’t say …

Christ Almighty, she's a complete dip****.

The irony being, we got Harris from a Big Six team! When I say "Big Six", I don't mean the teams with the six best records every year, or over the past X number of years. I mean the six franchises that get romanced the most in the media, year after year, almost irrespective of their records. The Yankees. The Dodgers. The Mets. The Giants. The Cubs. The Red Sox. These are the franchises that columnists, talking heads, and the fans they influence—whether consciously or unconsciously—get all dewy-eyed about. And therefore, they are also the franchises players with a choice tend to favor. Harris may end up back in the fold of one of those franchises, but hopefully, before he does, maybe we can end up considered at least one of the next tier of franchises, along with the Phillies, the Braves, the Orioles, the Astros, the Cardinals, the Mariners.

I agree. I have always been skeptical of how much PEDs even helps players do better at baseball and, not for nothing, Baseball has no interest either in pursuing the question if they haven’t, or publishing the results if they have. But using home-cooked technology to steal signs during a game is a clear and unambiguous undermining of competitive fairness.

When Jack’s good, he’s very very good. The problem is he’s not good consistently enough for me to want him to sign for five years here.

I will never get the idea why a guy who was one of the architects of the sign-stealing scandal should be given the red carpet treatment in Cooperstown. Beltran was, in fact, the only named player in the report. Nevertheless, because of their defense of the whole thing, and their subsequent apologies for participating in it only once they saw the jig was up, I will root against Altuve when he gets on the ballot, and if they get that far, against Bregman and Correa as well.

Thanks for the update. Here’s some news for you: the more static they get while trying to crime, the less successful they are at it. We have to keep up the static.

Well written reply. I appreciate much of what you say here. I would reply only that if that 11-year-old lodged a death threat against the president, then the USSS visit would be an appropriate response. But if all the kid did was something that’s the equivalent of “Trump is a poopyhead”, then unless you are an intractable red hat, we should all seriously worry about our country and ourselves. So, which do you think is likely to be the case here? And as you ponder an answer, just consider that if it were an actual death threat, or any other kind of bodily threat, do you think the USSS agents could have been successfully turned away from the door by elementary school administrators?

Is that what happened with the 11-year-old at the school? I didn’t see that in the story.

Oh, NOW we know why ICE didn't just hold administrators at bay at gunpoint and walk in—they weren't ICE at all. They were Secret Service. That totally checks out, because there is no forking way ICE would ever take "no" for an answer when they want to just go in and raise hell. But now we know: if you post anti-Trump content, they're coming for you. I mean, I guess most of us should be getting a little worried now? Because this subforum is lousy with anti-Trump content from everybody except, like, four or five guys.

Looks like we're gonna get our taxes to fund religious schools sooner than later. And when I say "religious", I mean only one religion.