We got Abu Ghraib. We got torture and Guantanamo and violation of our privacy and civil rights. But not giving Mark immunity?! Alberto Gonzalez, j’accuse! Regardless of your politics, you’ve got to admit this was an asshat move.
Title’s going for this:
The only problem is those legs are supposed to be Shelley Long’s.
We had this debate the other day and I’m completely unsure why I never found her attractive. I’ve been on record as dating/liking/living with intellectuals for a while now. Why I prefer Rebecca to Diane is still a point of contention for me.
Rebecca is meaner and I do like mean women, plus there’s the whole unattainable thing, if we live the series (which I believe we do) vicariously through Sam. In reading the Wiki page, the only three actors part of every show were Sam, Norm and Carla, so maybe we’re more supposed to identify with Norm? But he lives vicariously through Sam as well, so…did the female viewers live through Carla or were they forced to pick (an even harder choice) between living through Diane or living through Rebecca?
I’ve recently discovered the joys of DVR, so I’m reliving my emotional connection to a fake bar in Boston.
Plus that movie had Tom Cruise in it. It’s strange how a person’s trajectory can affect the way we view them. When he was younger, there wasn’t anyone as cool as Tom Cruise. The reality is that he probably didn’t change a whole lot–he was probably always kind of a freak. But our perspective of him shifted as we were exposed to different parts of his character.
Similarly, my perspective of Bob Costas has changed, mainly because mb continually points out he’s wearing a (bad) hair piece. Why I chose to not see it before is annoying to me now, as it clearly is not real hair and it seems like he could afford a much better one. I am obsessed now with seeing him without it. Anyone know where we can find a picture of him au natural? Well, without the wig anyhow?
Okay, I’m not often very fond of ESPN, but their commercials can be very good. That’s what this is.
Moar baseball? Well, I don’t wanna really rehash the ashes of Mark, so…I’ve developed two categories and I expect you all to participate, and create moar categories of your own! See? It’s a fun interactive game!
Ugliest man in baseball?
My choice: Otis Nixon. Looked 65 when he was 18.
Biggest butt in baseball?
My choice: Kirby Puckett. The man had ass for days.
Your turn.
Dump, Monkeys! And, um, related non-monkeys.
** is dead. Long live **!
Sal and I feel old
That comment brought out my grr-face.
ASVD
fuck em if they don’t know.
Sigh. I think they’re missing the point.
Hey xbx, if you’re ever here… fuck you.
Meh. Seriously, ** has completely changed since we were there, from a place where fans like us could have fun watching games “together” and talking about baseball-semi-related-or-not stuff, to a place where to make any comment at all you have to be ready to PROVE that you’re RIGHT.
The fact that people want to delete all the old nicknames and (more importantly) stories and replace it with a statistical acronyms dictionary makes that very clear.
Personally, I’d rather hang out in a bar than join a debate team.
Yeah, it’s way less appropriate to nearly come to blows with Giants fans when you’re at a debate…
They were GIANTS fans! Q-E-fuckin’-D!
Top
prospectchef.Shawn Haviland’s blog is great. If you don’t read it, you really should.
More.
I really wanted to order the Pancake and Pork Sandwich (yes it really exists) but sometimes you need to make sacrifices.
That’s a sigline waiting to happen.
Greek Yogurt happens to be at the intersection of the two matrices, delicious and good for you. Anytime those two matrices intersect I am going to try to eat that food every day.
Everyone’s a critic–I like how the 2nd comment goes after his plating.
I’m about 75% sure I was on the 45 last night with Mattin Noblia.
Was he wearing a saucy red bandana around his neck?
No, but he was wispy and was wearing some Euroweenie overstyled slacker shirt.
I see your Otis Nixon and raise you one Willie McGee
I was at a Giants-Cardinals game back in the mid-80’s. When Willie came up to bat, someone nearby yelled out “ET, PHONE HOME”.
Willie was indeed quite ugly. Good call.
I can’t believe no one’s mentioned Randy Johnson.
he’s an ugly like my cousin in West Virginia ugly.
Don. Mossi.
Bonus points for him being an Athletic.
Indeed. And McGee was a A for a little bit as well!
good call, and he was quite ugly.
Gustavo Chacin:
Ezequiel Astacio
The ugliest of them all:
Winner.
Oh for the love of Ba’al
{sends nm an email threatening to ban him for Knapp-linking without suitable warning}
Why yes I would like to learn how to make my knob firm like steel. Thanks for the email!
On her little time line there, how come she mentions us losing to the Dodgers and winning versus the Giant and does not mention losing to the Reds?
And is she always such a douche chill?
On the one hand, there is that. On the other hand, this is a much more succinct and therefore preferable argument.
Is that right? My (selective) memory is that subtracting 20 feet wouldn’t effect a lot of his HRs. I’d be interested in seeing a hittracker-esque analysis, but I don’t know if that’s possible.
Yeah, that struck me as not necessarily right.
I’m also firmly in the camp that believes (albeit without much/any evidence) that the ball was juiced.
I think (meaning other trustworthyish people I’ve read think) there is strong circumstantial evidence for that.
Bingo.
I’m definitely in this camp. I liked Tango’s take on the juiced ball:
It’s probably not as black and white as Tango makes it out to be, but there’s some strong evidence that the ball was juiced, and I submit that it was juiced in an effort to make the game more exciting after the strike.
Right.
Basically, by (relying on the testimony of others) confirming the Steroid Era, Selugworth is using that as a coverup for the ball juicing.
Hence, my sigline.
Joe Sheehan owes you money
I also remember watching an episode of Baseball Tonight in 95 or whenever and they dropped a new ball and an old ball off a balcony and the new ball bounced higher.
Depending on how old the old ball was, it might have just lost some resiliency. These things are hard to measure after the fact.
I thought I read somewhere that the issue was not with the cork center, but with the tension of the windings. That might be something you could still see a difference in later. But maybe not, since afaik no one has done it.
Subtracting 20 feet would make a big difference, along the lines of switching Hr-friendly vs. unfriendly parks. It’s not clear that that’s a good way to describe the effects of steroids, though.
Well isn’t there a correlation between muscle mass and distance? I thought I’d read something about that at some point.
And you’re right it would make a difference, just less than people think (is my hypothesis) because he hit particularly long ones.
So remind me again why we care more about McGwire than someone like Petitte or Tejada? Because he was better player? Are we supposed to scale our outrage according to excellence in performance? Is there a career WAR cut off?
Just trying to figure out who I am supposed to be mad at. I want to make sure I’ve got my moral compass pointed in the proper direction.
We’re supposed to be mad at him because he was the Great White Hope who saved us from having to rely on Sosa to save the game.
That’s the other thing I get confused about. I thought Cal Ripken saved baseball. In any event, that’s clearly the angle we should go with, since he seems really wholesome and never had suspicious looking muscles.
I’m with mikeA — I pray to Ba’al daily that we finally get the revelation that Cal roided.
I say we frame him.
YotD
Boy does he have some odd troll commenters.
Bob Herbert flogging.
Hmm, this guy seems under-valued using traditional metrics. Maybe the A’s can get him.
Lucy with football : Charlie Brown :: Chavvy’s health : Beane
did Chavy give Beane a signed affidavit?
Barren farm system. For comparison, our first B- is #5 (Cardenas) and we don’t have a C in our top 22.
They’re in a tough spot. This year figures to be their best team for the next several years, but it’s not that good and it won’t be easy at all for them to improve after 2010.
…my hair!
whose hair?
That was an awesome letter.
and a great closing salutation!
Maybe not as good as the video about getting stoked, but still pretty funny.
Never, ever, ever play poker with Morgan Freeman.
I actually don’t see any problem whatsoever with this. The ground rules seem to me to have been: we’ll keep you anonymous unless you quote yourself, in which case we have to say it’s your own account of your words.
Now, to be sure, there are other problems with it (multiple anonymice could gang up on someone and mis- or misleadingly quote him, and he’d look like a douche defending himself, and I really dislike the immense blanket of anonymity approach), and somehow I doubt that Reid himself was the original source for the quote — seems likelier that they got the “negro dialect” quote from other source(s), then went to Reid and confronted him with it for reaction, and he didn’t deny/hemmed and hawed, said “I may have said something like that,” and by their ground rules, they had him set up for a gotcha.
But the basic rule itself is pretty straightforward, and anyone who agreed to it and still provided quotes has to be a bit of a tool.
Doesn’t bother me too much either. But then, neither does the fact he said it.
…it’s true, isn’t it?
Yes.
What
AtriosAttaturk saidI like to think that 40 years ago major newsanchors didn’t work that way. Am I right?
I can’t imagine Walter Cronkite saying that, no.
Hell, I can’t imagine Peter Jennings saying that.
Maybe he wanted to say “Why the fuck do people care so much about this?”
What do our resident lawyers think of this?
Any profession needs admission standards (in our case, the Bar Exam). Those standards are flawed/stupid/etc, but they’re what we have.
As far as the income thing, there are very good law schools and very bad ones. If you choose to go to a very bad one, you do so with your eyes open, knowing you need to be top 10% (or whatever it is) to get a market-rate firm job (the bump on the right in that graph).
I don’t think it’s inherently a problem for more people to graduate from law school than there are jobs (heck, they’re better off for learning anyway).
Yeah, my reaction was pretty much yours and mikeA’s. Good to see it confirmed.
1. Yglesias is right.
2. Going to a bottom-half law school is a really bad idea.
2. Better call Saul!
Re 2: unless you know the city you want to work in and are confident you finish at the top of your class.
We, for example, often hire one USF person in a year.
I don’t think anyone should feel particularly confident about finishing at the top of the class beforehand.
I dunno. I have a friend at Hastings (admittedly, much better than USF) who was always smart but didn’t apply himself well for awhile. As a result, he didn’t have the top end credentials he needed for top tier places. Still, since he applies himself now it was a safe bet he’d do well enough to land a firm job.
{adds “applying top end credentials to bottom-half school” to Euphemism Directory}
Btw, I call-back-interviewed at your firm the same year as you I think, so we almost worked together. Maybe they didn’t like me because I was too focused on Game 1 vs. Detroit that day…
You did? That would have been cool.
I’m no lawyer, but this
is enough for me to call bullshit.
Follow-up question: is the ABA going the way of the AMA?
I don’t know why it would.
The bowlers?
Yikes. He’s finally really starting to look like his dad. He looks like he’ll be dead inside of 10 years.
If anyone is looking for reasons to like Posnanski, here’s one.
There ain’t nuthin’ more powerful than the smell of mendacity!
Nice!
Did anybody see this interview?
I saw about 30 seconds of it, and that was my instant take. I got a sick feeling in my stomach, and I clicked away.
The worst part is that Stewart really is the best we’ve got for this sort of thing. Yoo is smarter than Stewart by a fair margin, so it didn’t work out the way some of his other stuff has.
Colbert would have been a more interesting choice.
agrd.
But I think he’s sharper than Stewart.
He’s a worse interviewer though. His shtick is to not let his guests get a word in edgewise.
I’m not really talking about his schtick. He’s capable of turning VERY sharply on something as minor as a facial reaction/body language and he’s very quick on his feet and he’s also intuitive.
His schtick kinda grows wearisome. I tune in regularly for the bits that fall through the cracks.
BUT LEWIS BLACK ISN’T EVEN THERE TO CATCH THEM!!!!
Lewis Black’s good, too, now.
I just watched it – I know Stewart has had some pretty good takedowns in the past, but (views on torture aside) Yoo kinda owned Stewart. The best/worst part was when Yoo refused to get frustrated, and responded to Stewart’s irritation with increasing kindness.
Clearly, Stewart should have waterboarded him to get the answers he needed. Further proof that mollycoddling terrorists doesn’t work.
Yep. That’s pretty much the consensus.
The Stewart-as-journalistic-hero idea is past immature, halfway down the road to stupid. I know it feels good when someone occasionally poses an uncomfortable question to people who are allowed/encouraged to lie with impunity on “hard hitting” Meet the Press type shows, but he is hardly an avenging force for Truth, nor should anyone expect him to be. He is selling books for most of the people he tussles with, after all. Also, he and Brian Williams are BFFs.
A drowning man distinguisheth not between a thin reed and a USCG rescue helicopter lowering a sling from a winch.
Hey, he single-handedly ended Crossfire. He’s not totally useless. Of course, I agree with Ezra’s take:
I wish there was a news program as reputable as the Daily Show that would do this sort of stuff, because they’d do it much better.
… and yet the cycle would still repeat itself.
Uh…doesn’t it make more sense for the guests to know what to expect, to know what kind of show they’re coming on, and allow them to prepare instead letting the host engage in gotcha ambushes?
Interrupting the buy-my-book infomercial to call people on their bullshit constitutes not “gotcha ambushes.”
Depends upon whether you think asking Palin if she reads newspapers is a “gotcha ambush”
Or if you think that “All of them” is an honest and truthful response.
Maybe I misunderstood you. Here’s what I heard:
fact: Stewart should no longer have guests with whom he disagrees, since hi MO is known and the guests will come prepared to rebut arguments.
nm: dang, it would be great if real news people asked the tough questions that Stewart did.
mb: no, because once their game was known, guests would come prepared and the game would be up, so it wouldn’t matter.
salb918: instead of making this a game, what if there was a show where the freakoftheweek could pitch their book but still have to face tough questions, and know that they were going to face tough questions (without knowing the questions themselves)?
Do I have you wrong?
Sounds plausible to me. And I agree with you over mb.
I imagine what mb meant is that they would just skip the show.
No, my position is that any show that started off asking tough questions would get softer and softer as it went on.
I still don’t know where you got the “gotcha ambush” angle from.
Perhaps I’ve been sniffing too much solvent?
Understandable to think that this method would ultimately lead to the solution.
Don’t get me wrong, I like him. And I think the lefty expectation that he decimate all the conservo-villains he brings on his show is unfair to him.
He is much more effective at media satire than politician/issue satire.
I wish there was a news program as reputable as the Daily Show that would do this sort of stuff, because they’d do it much better.
Honestly, I wonder if there is even a market for that. Everyone claims that’s what they want, but I don’t think I believe them.
You’re right about all of this (although he does good politician satire in the video editing room too).
As far as the last part, the problem is it would instantly be labeled partisan or be so careful as to be uninteresting. The closest thing to perfect would be factcheck.org doing a TV show, but you’re probably right that there isn’t a market.
I’m pretty sure there’s a solid consumer market for that kind of show. I don’t know that there’s an advertiser market for it; nor, more importantly, a producer/talent market for it — what current on-air personalities would want to transition to such a project (I don’t think it’s at all possible that there are any Tortured Noble Intrepid Journalists who work in the salt mines of MSM network/cable news but O So Dearly Wish They Could Blow The Lid Off The Motherfucker With Some Old-School Speakin’ Truth 2 PWR), and what would be the career arc of someone coming in and then moving on?
Right. Though I remain dubious about the first sentence; I guess it depends how exactly you define this hypothetical news program. If it eschews overt partisanship, that winnows the potential audience by a lot right off the bat. Then its target is, what, the portion of Jim Lehrer’s demographic that doesn’t think the News Hour is sufficiently hard-hitting?
In fairness, factcheck gets a lot of traffic. As does snopes.
Internet is apples and TV is oranges, though.
Maybe monkeyball is right. I don’t really know. It’s an interesting question.
They dangle the carrot of access in front of them.
It doesn’t matter. We don’t have anyone that will do it.
If we don’t give a shit enough to want anything but the fucking sound bites and talking points they ALL feed to us, then we don’t deserve it.
If they don’t question people because they won’t give them access if they do and we’re dumb enough to just swallow what they feed us, well, then…
We divide up the turf, pick a team and lob rocks at the other side, all the while oblivious to the fact that the dichotomy makes us all cogs in the same machine. We’re fucking batteries, just like The Matrix.
Damn, but that humans-as-batteries imagery does burn an imprint in the memory, doesn’t it? What an awesome movie.
Depressing, but I’d say accurate.
haha
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/18/100118fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=6#ixzz0cQkcsdKU
40 crazy-huge meals which are free if you finish ’em. This pulled pork and sliced pork beauty from Kansas City looks really good:
(found via boingboing, which has a bunch of interesting stories today, including pieces on the Jelly Belly founder who has been banished from his empire, secret aeriel spy drones being used by the Houston PD, new photos of the famous Phineas Gage, the webpage of “Britain’s Most Famous Virgin,” and this neat photo from Mars:
)
re: the photo of Mars:
It was … the salmon mousse!
After looking through all 40, I have resolved never to eat anything again.
I would dominate 3, 4, 10, 16, 24, 33, and 37. The question, of course, is why.
‘Nuf said.
That doesn’t really seem fair.
Next time you see Fox talking about how “a majority of Americans oppose health care reform” think about this.
Fox story line: 67% of Americans do not agree with the way HCR covers Americans.
Actual story line: 57% of Americans either support the way HCR covers Americans or wish it would do more.
Serious question for our FK-ing conservatives: What is the non-Yglesiasmic interpretation of “Real Jobs for Real People”? I am hyper-attuned to things that I think are dog whistles, so I am quite possibly too-swayed by his analysis.
That seems like a harmless enough slogan, albeit without any actual meaning. I think you have to have a hyper-attuned sense of partisanship/an unhealthy obsession with conservative Kremlinology to actually read anything into that slogan.
I would like to agree on the second sentence, but I can’t buy that someone’s primary campaign slogan is meaningless either.
“change we can believe in” is similarly vague and could probably be snarked on by conservatives. Martha Coakley is “A Different Kind of Leader” – also vague, pretty much meaningless, and if I were a conservative, I’m certain I could snark on that as well. MY is being ridiculous.
FWIW, “CWCBI” allegedly took a very hard sell by his campaign team to get Obama to sign off on it.
Yes, all campaign slogans have a significant amount of breeze blowing through them. However, the people who craft them usually know exactly what they’re doing.
I can tell you exactly what Obama’s meant: that he was actually going to make the changes that his opponents talked about (and that Bush was a shitty president).
I know nothing about Martha Coakley (and I certainly would not say that all Democratic slogans are good, so I’m sure you can find bad ones).
I’m just saying “Real People” must mean something. I don’t want it to mean what MY says, but I don’t have a better idea. I was/am hoping someone else will.
I would think it is along the lines that MY/mb are suggesting, but with more emphasis on class resentment than racial, appealing to ranchers, miners, and construction workers. Implication that these sectors would thrive if the damn government just got out of the way. Classic conservative populism.
[In reality, of course, the Nevada economy is based mostly on shitty service jobs in the casino industry.]
That makes sense.
It’s pretty clear to me that it means “Non-gubmint/non-ACORN/non-stimulus jobs for white people.”
where’s my motherfucking movie check?
Beef: It’s Real Food For Real People.
Tofurkey: It’s fake food for fake carnivores.
i: it’s an imaginary number for the real world.
woo: who the hell let that ghost in here?
pi: it would be delicious, if only we could figure out exactly what it was
Why does the ANcillary Terms thing piss me off so much?!
Because it’s inherently stupid.
I don’t know?!
My advice is to spend less time obsessing over the flaws of something (AN) you clearly enjoy.
I hear hypnosis helps. Maybe there is a patch you can try.
Thanks for being an asshole to me.
You’re welcome?
I’m not going to do the eggshells thing, LB.
You like AN. You post there lots. Yet you seem constantly discontented by it. Don’t you think you’d feel better about the whole thing if you stopped sweating the small stuff?
Yes, I’ve been too sensitive here–you’re right. Sorry for the overreaction.
There’s some things about AN I like. There are others which I don’t.
Without having read the current AN thread, I’d offer the opinion that I believe Poppy would, if she were posting today: the ANcilliary terms piece was designed to be a living, regularly updated page, and since Blez cluelessly set it up in a way that made it uneditable, it quickly became obsolete. So yes, it offers a view of a certain moment in AN’s time, but like a history book from 1980 it offers little in the way of understanding anymore.
Yeah, the SBN exec/code team seems to really really hate anything they didn’t think up/design/steal in the first place.
That’s an accurate representation of what Reasonable Poppy would say. Poppy’s a little bit irrational and pissed off right now, though.
I love you.
Not only set it up to be un-editable, but also added a whole bunch of spectacularly bad nicknames used by no-one but himself.
Srsly. Los Kirk?
Bueller? Bueller?
The book is open on whom Sarah Palin will offend first as a Fox commentator.
At first sight, some of the lines seem off (Christians at 18/1 ahead of Inuit at 20/1), but note the requirement:
It’s a REAL book! Wow.
Gay/Lesbian at 4:1 is sure money in the bank. No way she talks for an hour without offending the Gay/Lesbian community.
But that apology requirement is a tough hurdle.
hmmm…good point.
Yes indeed, given her Murdochian overlords, who were in no hurry to make Britt Hume apologize for curtly dismissing the very idea of Buddhist compassion the other day.
I’d bet on it being Christians, or Corporations, or White Men…some group firmly in her camp. Hell, Fox might even contrive a faux brouhaha which ends up showing us all what a big happy family the right can be. Not at all shrill and hairy like the Feminazis.
Britt Hume is part cyborg, so he doesn’t need to apologize. Didn’t you ever wonder what he’d do after he killed Sarah Connor?
Timely, given our discussion.
Being truthful is always the correct course of action, I:
(sigh)
He played baseball. He is not a politician. The fact he took steroids affects our lives about as much as a fucking rabbit in New Mexico does. The stakes of his using steroids are NOTHING, especially when compared to the evil transcendent methods employed by those cocksuckers in Washington.
I may have to cancel my recent subscription to the NYT. Investigate the guys making policy, you stupid fucks.
Depending on how frequently that rabbit is fucking, the effect on our lives could be huge.
I knew I should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
Being truthful is always the correct course of action, II
Unless you need the money and/or allowed a HR off your own head. Then it makes you a pretentious blowhard since it forces us to admit things before we are ready.
Yeah, Calcaterra’s really taken a turn for the conventional since joining NBC.
Inevitable, really
But much faster than I would have thought.
I still like him.
Oh, I still like him, and he’s still bringing the snark — it just seems as if a bolus of conventional wisdom is hitting his bloodstream.
(sigh)
Just as no one takes you to task, Craig Calcaterra, for being complicit in an obviously trumped up home run race in 1998. Just like none of us call ourselves into question for believing in something that was so obviously contrived. It’s not the fucking inquisition. It’s baseball.
Eh, Calcaterra was a private citizen then.
But why/how was the ’98 HR chase “trumped up”? I mean, more so than the 5-8 years surrounding it on each side? Were those HRs not hit? Did Sosa and McGwire not hit more of them than all of the other humans on the field? Was it still not the most difficult single task in sports (or however the Splinter defined it)?
I mean, your dad was Santa Claus — that doesn’t mean that the gifts you got were somehow less fun or more immaterial.
It was trumped up because there were long stretches of time while we were growing up where no one came close to fifty, much less 70, much less TWO people blowing past a thirty year-old record. But…I liked it at the time, too. I enjoyed it and reveled in it and all that, too. In retrospect, it was silly of me to believe it was “on the level,’ whether it was steroids or a juiced ball or a combination of the two (my vote). It was contrived. It was a plot to get us all to “buy in” again. And we did.
It doesn’t make the presents any less enjoyable, no. But we were lied to and we were manipulated. And, unlike the five year-olds who allow Dad to be Santa, we could have known better.
So regardless of whether he was a private citizen or not, he’s every bit as complicit as we all were. All we really had to do was pay attention.
but the reality very well could be that I’m just grumpy today.
I’m confident that each time I’ve used “evil”, “transcendent”, and “cocksuckers” in the same sentence, whether in writing or aloud, I’ve been in a grumpy mood. I could see a happy person saying “evil” or “cocksuckers”, or even “evil cocksuckers”, but the addition of “transcendant” seals the deal.
In college, I played amplified klaxon for the Evil Transcendant Cocksuckers.
Al Swearengen was an evil transcendent cocksucker.
Nooooooooo-body expects baseball!
Our weapon is a bat. A bat and a ball. A ball and a bat.
Our TWO weapons are a bat, a ball, and intangible grit.
THREE.
Our THREE weapons are a bat, a ball, intangible grit, and an almost fanatical devotion to conventional wisdom….ah!
AMONGST our weapons are: a bat, a ball, …
Nooooooooo-body expects the Congressional Inquisition!
Our weapon is a subpoena. A subpoena and a pliant media. A subpoena and a pliant media.
Our TWO weapons are a subpoena, a pliant media, and manufactured outrage.
THREE.
Our THREE weapons are a subpoena, a pliant media, manufactured outrage, and an almost fanatical devotion to conventional wisdom … ah!
AMONGST our weapons are: a subpoena, a pliant media …
Nooooooooo-body expects an honest politician!
Our weapon is a disingenuous riposte. A disingenuous riposte and a populist appeal. A populist appeal and a disingenuous riposte.
Our TWO weapons are a disingenuous riposte, a populist appeal, and a refusal to answer questions.
THREE.
Our THREE weapons are a disingenuous riposte, a populist appeal, a refusal to answer questions, and an almost fanatical devotion to playing the refs … ah!
AMONGST our weapons are: a disingenuous riposte, a populist appeal …
Byg Csnurb massages Chavvy’s back
Actually, it’s a decent piece. Some labored metaphors, and it meanders a bit, but not bad.
Also: did we know this?
And it looks as if, yes, Chavvy’s health has always been far worse than we’ve been told (either that or he’s had some weird personal issues):
I endorse this:
If he isn’t healthy (and he isn’t) I want to know/deal with it asap.
If he can only, best-case scenario, play 3 games in a row, he’s done and the A’s need to move on with a 100% 3B. Chavvy can do what he likes, but the org needs to move on.
I’d rather have him there 3 days a week for the first 6 weeks of this season and then have to scramble for the leftover-leftover-leftover FAs than have Fox et al. there those days
Fixed
Still true. There’s no FA I’d rather have than Fox et al.
I’d take Crede on a deal similar to Duchscherer’s.
Every time I so much as beam a hesitant ray of Dallas McPherson quasi-hope at my computer, you interject with a snarky comment about how he’s going to be eating jello with Chavvy at a Scottsdale rehab clinic by May.
Crede, games played:
2007: 47
2008: 97
2009: 90
Fair ’nuff. No, Crede won’t likely be healthy either. But at this point I’m happy to prioritize potnetially outstanding D over potentially not-entirely-sucky O at the position.
I would say: Mc is broken and bad; Crede is broken and ok.
The Blue Aeroplanes on MUZU
If he’s not healthy enough to play more than half time, I don’t think it likely that he’ll be any good for that half time. Similarly, if his back is hurting too much to play defense, then he won’t hit well enough to be an asset at DH.
Plus, there’s the unreliable/unproductive eating up of a 25/40-man spot.
… which would explain the A’s interest in The Other Hairston (and, I suppose, theoretically the previous interest in The Other Patterson).
And goddamn it, the way they piss away 25-man space on guys who can only play every fifth day has been the A’s approach that has angered me more than any other over the past few years.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.
Quite serious. Given a choice between keeping a veteran on the roster through a nagging stretch of unavailability (Nomar, Chavvy, Bradley, etc etc) which often as not ends up as a DL trip anyway, or bringing up a AAAA bench filler, the A’s seem to go with the wasted roster spot every time.
See, I thought you were snarking about mollycoddled rotation pitchers and their once every five days routine.
Which is why I was confused. FSU’s comment could have been brilliant or a face palm moment, depending on if he was thinking about the pitching staff at the time.
The tragedy is that I actually paused to choose what interval I’d write…pissing away space on guys who can only play every third day didn’t seem long enough to warrant my anger. I was gonna go with every fourth day, then decided that fifth sounded funnier. I’ll
neversurely make that mistake again.[sigh] I still heart Chavvy.
{places ws40’s heart on the 60-day DL)
who we calling up to replace ws40’s heart?
Dan. Johnson.
shouldn’t he have at least been day-to-day with an aorta for a week or so?
Awesome
“Saying moronic things for which you are mercilessly mocked need not prevent you from making millions!” This message brought to you by the Liquor Council.
Cole’s sidekick is in town
True (political, but non-partisan) story. Calling things we don’t like unconstitutional is usually about as apt as calling them Nazis.
I’m pretty sure Joe Buck is unconstitutional.
And Costas’ rug violates the separation of church & state.
And baseball owners piss on the Commerce Clause.
Conan’s monologue from last night was a’ight, but this is genius:
excellent
winner.
Ah, David. I knew him when.
I don’t like #10. He talk good but he still scum. He get too much respect.
I really liked The Elf Chronicles, BTW. Good job.
When… he was funny?
It’s the Letterman deadpan so-unfunny-it’s-funny-especially-if-you-repeat-it-enough school.
I disagree. I think it’s petty (which is especially bad in her case since there’s so much seriously wrong with her).
Well, yeah.
The tags here are awesome.
“Show me on the doll where Rahm touched you” almost made me piss myself.
Yeah, the FDL people have really and truly cracked.
Balloon Juice wins reliably at two things: pointing out stupid (both far far left and right) and tags.
Blaming progressives for a Democratic machine politician’s inability to win easily in a state where they have a partisan edge of something like 2:1 is its own kind of stupid.
I don’t think that’s what’s going on. I think he’s blaming democratic blogs for focusing on other (very very stupid) things like getting Rahm fired for not turning Ben Nelson into Nancy Pelosi while ignoring the fact that Ted’s seat could switch parties (which wouldn’t kill HCR but would kill Cap and Trade/Stimulus 2/etc)
Give the man his $27.5 MM
The real reason xbx hasn’t returned to FK
I thought you’d link to this.
Boy, he’s just a right cranky bastard, isn’t he? I’ll be he doesn’t even like Coen Bros. references any more.
That Meester Moonkeyball, he’s a-nice poo-flinger. I give him a-double stitch anyhow.
Poor guy. He’s trying oh so hard to start a fight, but AN appears to have collectively lost the will and/or capacity to deploy the snide retorts necessary to really kick the flame war into gear.
Come back home, xbx. There’s an apple pie in the oven, Billy and Susie are playing checkers in the living room, and if you tell us something we enjoy is idiotic, I promise we’re not too
matureproud to tell you where to stick your meany mcmeanness. It’ll be an angsty yet cleansing experience, like yelling and showering at the same time. And at the end of it all, pie!I can’t even get you to fight with me.
You are a transcedentally evil cocksucker, you know that?
Thanks, Sal! I lovelovelove Al Swearengen.
That’s because, transcendant cocksucking aside, you’re in it for the hugs. xbx is in it for the punching.
oh. okay.
um, can I have a hug?
Isn’t it a little early in the day to be taking ecstasy?
It’s NEVER too early for ecstasy. Don’t talk the crazy talk.
Metal merchants peddle their wares.
From here:
I’m fairly certain he’s underestimating us.
I love you right now. Like, a lot.
FYI, peeps, there’s an 11th hour attempt to keep me at the sign shop, or reinsert me, if you will.
Stop (resists the urge to just end the comment right there after the one word) just a minute and do tell: what’s the story? “Reinsert” is a movie reference, no? Do you have a protege (S.D.) who is set to take over the sign shop for you? Why the yearning to return to the Bay–more connections there than in Florida? How’d you end up over there anyway?
reinsert is an Arrested Development reference, ala Tobias Funke.
We have a manager installed over there right now who is not working out. he refuses to learn how to do printed signs and insists on sticking with cut lettering signs. This is in keeping with 1995, not so much 2010.
I’ve basically told them that I would take it back over until they find someone else. My brother works fulltime, like 70-80 hours a week and my sister-in-law does not know how. So here I am in this damn bed and whose gonna feed them hogs?
I love the Bay Area/California–I miss my friends, the A’s, the weather and the coast–not necessarily in that order. Especially in summer.
I had graduated from grad school and returned ot CA from Chicago. Got divorced and basically retreated to my parents and brother. I was doing the Minneapolis (brother)/Ohio (father), Sarasota (mother) rotation when they conspired to strand me in Florida, which was okay at the time because it was winter. Since then, summer’s come and gone a few times and I realize how horrible Sarasota is. Dad died, so I can’t go to Ohio (not that I’d want to live in rural SE Ohio), and my brother moved here and bought a sign shop for some unknown reason. When we worked there together in the beginning, it was a combination of fun and frustration. After we could not afford to pay us both, he left (I was the one who learned to make signs, after all) and got another job. He abandoned me there. I was stuck doing about 75% of the work of a VERY busy sign shop and it was still not making enough money because of the overhead he incurred in procuring said sign shop. So it was maddening and frustrating and involved a great deal of martyrdom on my part and a compromise of values (I don’t really believe in capitalism) of sorts for me.
1) I had thought it was a “Matrix” reference.
2) I once did a story on a small-town trophy shop for my old small-town newspaper. I imagine the business model is similar–one shop in town, and so the only competition is with the next shop several miles away, and the hope is to cover the biggest geographical area possible?
3) My fee-yahn-say came home when i was in the middle of this comment, and I was like, “whoops. I got online to look up a recipe for something I was going to make you when you got home, but …” Oh well. That was last night.
“Looking up a recipe to make for you…”
I’ll have to remember that one. If I ever have a girlfriend ever again.
(sigh)
Is that the sort of “recipe” that calls for [butterflies, strawberries, and other non-disgusting things]
That reference has been, and will continue to be, stricken from the internet.
Man, if you were going to go for the x, y, and z happy things list, you really at least should have used “sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.”
Jesus Christ, no wonder they took so many fucking drugs.
Plus, dammit, I spent a good 3 minutes figuring out the precise phrasing for that joke to work with “recipe.”
I stand by my decision.
Missed opportunity:
Fan-fucking-tastic.
And I’m shocked that this is new for me.
I was really surprised that I hadn’t seen that either. Can’t keep up with the internets, I guess.
must be new if all of us are hitting it for the first time.
TWWS
salb: early leader for FKGSOTD
I give up. I think the g is for geek.
Free Kraut Green Star Oakland Tweak Droid
Gold Star
Free Kraut Gold Star Oakland Tweak Droid?
That makes even less sense.
And why the fuck does my spell check not know droid?
because that’s not the droid it’s looking for.
You got room on your couch?
We’re all coming and we need a place to stay.
My proposed response to terrorism, counter-terrorism approved:
Note that he was promoted to that position by dirty-hippie-in-chief Dubya.
Yeesh.
Where the fuck, I wanna know, is Tim Kaine?
I’m glad that a shitty politician doesn’t coast to an easy win just because they’re running as a Democrat in Mass. At the same time, it sucks that Mass. couldn’t get a real senator in line.
If she loses, HCR is ok but everything else is screwed.
I think (and I’d guess that you’ll agree with me) that this is also evidence that when one party gets a stranglehold on power in a given state, that that state party ossifies into a classic “machine” that becomes (a) increasingly detached from the electorate, reality, and the media/information landscape (local media is *not* like national/Beltway media in that respect) and (b) unable to generate any “superstars” from its “farm system” (instead, it’s all Corey Pattersons and Tommy Everidges and mid-to-late-career Jason Kendalls).
I’m not sure that necessarily follows. It seems more likely that when a state has two slam dunk senators (neither Kennedy nor Kerry would have ever lost an election under any circumstances) it makes it hard to keep a good replacement ready. But then, Connecticut appears to be all over that issue so maybe I’m wrong about that too.
But when does a state have two SDS’s of the same party, and that same state party does not have a stranglehold on power?
AR, AZ, CO, ME, MI, MT, ND, VA
SDS: Lincoln and McCain both look to be in trouble for reelect (and the AZ GOP doesn’t have a stranglehold on power? I’m talking federal representation and state leg; as we know all too well, gubernatorial power is … idiosyncratic); Udall maybe, but Bennett as SD?; Maine and Montana I’ll give you; is MI not a solidly D state, insofar as leg control + fed rep?; Dorgan’s retiring; and I don’t know that I’d call Warner or Webb necessarily SD
Fair enough on Lincoln, but I don’t see McCain losing. AZ could well have gone Obama if anyone other than McCain was running. It’s not a perfect example though.
MI is usually pretty swing-y, especially as union jobs dry up and people get angrier.
In short, it happens but is unusual. They’re certainly overlapping considerations, but neither is a subset. I think the SD thing is worse whether or not they’re aligned with the dominant party in that state (Feinstein is getting nutty, Snowe should have voted for HCR, etc). I certainly don’t think MO, for example, has a healthier political system just because they’re among the swing-iest.
Well, I think we may be talking past each other a bit — I think you’re more focused on POTUS vote as an indicator (which I’m inclined to agree with Yglesias and the poli sci people on: that’s less an indicator of party loyalty [and even less of party infrastructure] than it is of, basically, the national/state economic situation and the wartime-status [however defined]), while I’m more concerned with the state-level party infrastructure issue.
And, yeah, DiFi is nudging toward Lieberman/Blue Dog territory on her own weird set of issues. She really needs to be replaced.
I will be shocked if she loses.
Would you like to see why the US has a massive budget deficit?
Here’s the answer.
our straws are all messed up?
so we should all go join Jedi Leroy in JP?
Pretty much, yeah. Or anywhere else in the “first world”
DISAPPOINTED
Elder hot of the highest order.
Abso-freakin’-lutely
I just finished watching Prime Suspect in its entirety. Her awesomeness is something like nine galaxies outside the boundaries of what language is able to express.
Following the Beeb tangent, I just watched the pilot of the original Life on Mars. Wow.
Why does Peter Weir make so few movies?
My name is Jack….
(Note: if I’m the only one who has played rugby this’ll be a missed reference)
Oy
Marin local politics is a disaster with which I have a lot of second-hand experience. It amounts to Generic Observation #1: People are stupid.
I hardly ever read Rick Reilly–not good for my blood sugar level–but this column is a good account of the troubled transgendered LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner/Christine Daniels, who killed herself a few montsh ago.
I appreciate that MLBTR’s WAGs are usually marked as such, but I sometimes wonder if they just throw the A’s name into the ring for no good reason.
Let’s sign another immobile, defensively challenged sorta-kinda 3B with back issues who can hit HRs!
… or, if we don’t want to limit ourselves to back problems …
Oh, come on — JMM seems to think this means Palin ain’t taking the money. Seems self evident to me that they’re simply giving it to her “PAC” (read: retirement fund) instead.
SarahPAC FAQ:
I’d love to see an accounting of that last sentence.
No, no, no, you’re supposed to underpromise and overdeliver!
Their handling of the stimulus has been notably incompetent from Day One, in concepting, execution, and communcation
I haven’t read the article, because I can sense it says mean things about Obama, but I would just like to note that ProPublica is fantastic. I don’t know what their finances look like; hopefully they’re stable enough to maintain the operation long term.
I wouldn’t say mean things…but it does indicate that the accounting (the new era of government transparency!) was perhaps overly ambitious.
Fair criticism. They did over promise and under deliver. We can get into why (congress slashed stimulus, admin underestimated size of recession, etc) but you’re dead right on this one.
interesting
One immediate advantage springs to mind: When your draft number gets called to go before the Death Panels, the odds will be higher that all the Death Panelists will be out on mandated holiday.
or on strike.
I am living the European Dream right now. High hourly, wages, low hours.
we appear to have the opposite job.
Being a john is not a job.
Fixed.
I thought the first paragraph was funny. (I haven’t read the full article and have no opinion (yet) on school gardens.)
Paraphrased quote from her boss: “she is one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met.”
which is why she was fired from the new yorker…
I just came across that also (via sfgate)), and ditto your parenthetical, but this logic
fails to impress me. Shouldn’t the same reasoning apply to art, music, and sports?
There are lots of annoying things about Alice Waters, and school gardens may be pointless, but I just can’t believe they’re doing any harm.
They may not do harm, but they may have an opportunity cost.
Heck, healthier eating actually DOES lead to better scores. There was another survey in the UK recently, but I couldn’t quickly google it.
My kids go to Malcolm X Elementary in Berkeley (a neverending source of mirth and head-shaking among my staid East Coast relatives), which is one of the schools with a Waters-funded garden. Berkeley schools also have a Waters-driven healthy school food plan (I’ve eaten there myself) which produces meals which are much, much more healthy and more palatable than anything I ever saw in a school cafeteria in my day.
The garden curriculum basically amounts to one hour twice a month, where a classroom of kids hangs out in the garden with the gardening instructor, helping with the upkeep and generally learning about plants, nutrition, etc. My third grader now has a remarkable (for her age) understanding of DNA, for example, which was learned exclusively in the garden classes.
In addition, the garden is open for kids during recess, lunch, and afterschool, which is where many kids spend time in lieu of playing cootie tag or stealing others’ lunch money.
While I’m sure there aren’t any empirical studies associating the isolated variable of garden instruction availability to overall test scores, I have not that faintest doubt in my mind that the program is a net plus for my kids’ learning. It encourages more learning time outside of classroom hours, and on balance takes away less classroom time than stupid-ass assemblies and fire drills. I also note that Malcolm X is a consistently high performing school, though I won’t claim that’s because of the garden program.
I now am filled with bitter regret that my school did not have a garden program.
In currently Soviet Berkeley, bitter regret is filled with *you*
That’s a great anecdote. Thanks for sharing.
1. What everyone else already said (esp. FSU, who offers empirical data)
2. IIRC, CF is an unmitigated bitch on all sorts of issues
3. I’m all for DFH-bashing, but it’s a sign of the typical wheelspinning required of magazine feature-writing to pad out word count that THE ENTIRE FIRST PAGE HAS ESSENTIALLY NO CONTENT (but vitriol, handwringing, and whataboutthechildren-izing)
Kräuterlikör!
Wolpertinger!
Wolpertinger Kräuterlikör!
Kraut, what a jackalope