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I guess you’re not the only one caught by surprise on this. A Cubs fan friend set that to me and I had to admit to him I wasn’t gonna lie I knew nothing about it.

Careful, now ... you don't want to out the guy and get his busted and deported ... 😉

That would definitely be a big swing that needs a firm plan and literally everybody on board.

This will definitely fire up the MAGA overlords and their red hat troops.

This isn't worth a whole thread, i don't think, but maybe we have a little fun and try to guess some of the outlandish executive orders Agent Orange is going to grace us with in the coming weeks or months? I have three off the top of my head: Rename Lake Ontario to "Lake New York", or better yet, "Lake America". Declare that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. Declare that Juneteenth is no longer a federal holiday, and threaten to withhold federal funds from any state that maintains its status as a state holiday. Replace it with Flag Day as a federal holiday. Two reasons: (1) it's his own birthday; (2) he's horny for the flag. Anyone else wanna play? The only request is that there has to be a puncher's chance that he would actually do it, which, as I think about it, opens it up to practically anything.

At this rate, it might be tough for the Tigers to repeat as winners of the PBATS MLB Athletic Training Staff of the Year Award.

This is more a pet peeve than it is amusing: I'm wondering whether Amazon is starting to lose it. Three recent incidents: I ordered two boxes of Gimme Seaweed Snacks in late February. When I opened the bag, they looked and tasted musty, as though they sat in a warehouse for a year. Which they probably did: they were expired by a few weeks by the time I'd gotten them. Amazon did do a "one-time courtesy" (or something) refund of the product on the spot. There is an inexpensive disposable personal care product I buy on a regular basis, and I always used to just go to my Buy Again page to find it and order it. Except last week: the product was no longer listed, not only on my Buy Again page, but not even in my order history at all, and I did an exhaustive search for at least fifteen minutes looking for it. After all, how could I misplace that? It always was where it was, for a couple of years at least. Until it wasn't, and as of today, still isn't. I had to buy a different product from the same company, which is now in my Buy Again—for the moment. And now, this week, I learned from Amazon themselves that a food product I ordered back on March 4 "may be lost". No, seriously. See screenshot below. (Yes, it's another brand of seaweed snacks. I like seaweed snacks. So sue me.) When you click on "return or replace items", you learn that this particular item can be neither returned nor replaced. Also, there is no easily-findable link on the Amazon page for customer service or chat. I had to Google "Amazon chat support" to get to it. And I cycled through three different reps (i.e., Sachin had a technical issue. Please wait while we transfer you to a new associate) trying to get a refund, which, they ended up saying they could not issue because it's a third-party seller, so they apparently reached out to them on my behalf to contact me. We'll see where this goes. I do think Amazon is starting to lose it, by which I mean, the "it" of customer care that is emblematic of a company that operates in a competitive marketplace where they fear losing your business. Welcome to your brave new world: canis caninam non est, so, caveat emptor.

Our future center fielder is at least two years away from everyday starting, so if Parker is done done—no, I'm not assuming, just saying "if"—then I guess it's the Wenceels/Margots of the world this season, and a one-year stopgap along the lines of Bader or Michael A. Taylor next year.

Back in your bad old day, a high school dropout could walk in the front door at Ford's or Chrysler's and get a job that would support an entire family. 😉

I could be talked into orange jerseys, as long as they have white pants. It's bad enough the current Connects look like PJs—I wouldn't want to see my team looking like clementines in the next iteration.

Right—with the quote made without center field explicit within, or in direct response to a question about center field, it is at least 50/50 that Petzold broadened the context of a statement Harris made when he might have been thinking about his infield work, versus Harris making the statement in an unqualified way. All that said, even though Kreidler played two innings of CF in 2022 and one inning there last year, there's probably a good reason he hasn't played any more innings there, so I would be surprised to see someone Harris regards as an "elite center fielder" have his time so limited there. I'd bet it's the same situation as Baez getting reps in center: we need a third or fourth option to play there if we see many more better options go down to injury. I think the idea of kicking the tires on Moniak is interesting, although he is essentially a left-handed hitter, which we are lousy with, and there's probably a reason a team much worse than we cut bait on him.

I didn't see where Harris said that Kreidler is an elite center fielder.

Fire Harris, too. 😜

That sounds good on paper, but Whitewater worked because nothing bigger or more horrific happened to replace it. With this regime, something will happen within a week that will dwarf this and make us forget all about it. It seems unbelievable and even impossible, since this is an existential national security issue, but really, just wait and see.

in the bag

Within the thread: This incident has the potential of ... ahem ... signalling the beginning of the end of the free press in America. How can this be stopped?

There's always that probability, too, since she is starting to get the publicity she needs to goose her follower numbers.

Fire Hinch. 😏

I've given in on the concept of City Connects. I just really dislike this version. I would like to see them change it to a sleeker, less cartoonish look, as the Astros have.

I think he cares, and I think he's on top of them, but in order to achieve different ends than we would normally expect from our president. They're not stupid, and they're not making mistakes.

I've stopped short of believing this was a setup to entrap the MSM, but I am totally believing that the regime will use this incident to openly clamp down hard on all MSM.

It's even worse than that: they are completely conflating loyalty with competence, 100%. We should probably remember, though, that the goal of who benefits most in a trade agreement negotiation is almost certainly far different for MAGA than for Democrats.

Maybe because she knows she would win a safe district and lose a swing district? Council members can't get social media engagement and spike their income like congressional reps. That said, I don't know that she's a MAGA in progressive's clothing, although she is certainly good-looking enough to be.

They don’t want you to have the money. They want that money. They first have to get you used to the idea that Social Security will not be there for you when you need it. That will make this job much easier for them. I think people are inadvertently misleading themselves (and others) when they term all the bad stuff happening to the government because of Musk as “mistakes” and/or that the Muskovites are “stupid”. Characterizing this in that way simply lets those people off the hook by portraying them as honest actors trying to work on behalf of the American people and that things are merely not going as well as planned. Let’s be crystal on this: they are not stupid, and they are not making mistakes. More to this particular point, they are not making mistakes with Social Security, and they are not doing all this because they are stupid.

I won’t hold growing up in a Reagan Republican household against her, but I am a little skeptical of the whole TikTok influencer background, which means she seeks to attract extreme attention first and foremost, and her very young age, which means she just barely solidified her prefrontal cortex. She may still be bouncing around various ideologies to see what fits best, and she might be trying out different approaches to see what gets her the most engagement. I wouldn’t vote for her just because she’s a D who’s easy on the eyes.