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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Monday, July 16, 2018
As the World Cup finale plays in my living room, it’s seems like the right time to reflect on “America’s pastime” – baseball – and its curious standing these days.
The sport gets it close-up on Tuesday night, when the Major-League All-Star Game is played in the nation’s capital. President Trump is not expected to be attendance, though he easily could zip over to the festivities upon his return from his meeting with Vladimir Putin.
Dating back to William Howard Taft in 1910, every president has done the season’s ceremonial first pitch at least once. So far, Trump’s twice declined to participate in that ritual.
(As always, views expressed in the article lede and comments are the views of the individual commenters and the submitter of the article and do not represent the views of Baseball Think Factory or its owner.)
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What else?
All of which seems to indicate to me one inescapable fact that somehow escapes the Trumpkins:
Maybe everybody doesn't "do it"... at least, not to everyone else?
I believe it goes: Hillary, SERVERS!, CLINTON FOUNDATION!, URANIUM ONE!, VINCE FOSTER!, SETH RICH!, SECRET MARS PIZZAGATE BASE, something something ...
Affidavit
You Putinesque cockholsters should be dragged kicking and screaming from decent society like Jerry Lundegaard getting dragged out of his motel at the end of “Fargo”.
he always disappears whenever Trump does something extraordinarily ridiculous he doesn't have to deal with it 9and us). He'll return when things cool off a bit so he can berate us for opposing Trump so he can look only massively foolish rather than galactically foolish.
It's... well, it's as bad as the tweets say. Worse, probably.
This was an American President so far removed from what an American President should be that it's hard to fathom - even from someone has ridiculous as Trump.
Does Trump keep Dan Coats' balls in a jar on his desk, like Putin keeps Trump's balls in a jar on HIS desk?
It's absolutely, utterly surreal.
No wonder the Trumpkins have made themselves especially scarce here today... maybe they have a shred of shame afterall... for all the good that does.
What has Brett Kavanaugh written on the subject of investigating and indicting the President of the NRA while in office? That guy also has a very busy and challenging job.
No wonder "everybody does it" is the latest Trumpkin line.
In a somewhat testy exchange with a scary Wolf Blitzer about Trump's bizarre comments in Helsinki, Paul used the term "Trump Derangement Syndrome" for those, he said, who believe that Russia stealing DNCC emails and publishing them turned all those Rust Belt double-Obama voters into Trump voters - thereby flipping the election to Trump.
TDS reference on CNN!
All the various Trumpkins are collapsing into a singularity of stupid.
This is not surprising.
At this point, I'm far more interested in making sure the names are noted, recorded, and remembered than I am hoping for any of the Cult45s to drink the antidote.
They all hope their little quirks and parlor games of sophistry will mean they're not permanently marked with the stink, but the stink is the stink and will always be the stink.
This Christopher Steele fellow is looking more credible by the day isn’t he.
I've heard the term used before I saw it here.
Trump moves to extradite prosecutors who brought charges against GRU agents.
Made you look.
And you probably figured it was at best, mostly not true.
We've gotta be coming close...
McConnell did say something today, although he didn't criticize Trump directly:
Cornyn was a little more explicit:
It would be wishful thinking under a non-Trump President.
Under a Trump Presidency, I'll restate that it's probably MORE likely Trump extradites the prosecutors who brought charges to Russia.
Paul's usage easily passes muster in the Official TDS Style Guide.
Well it’s just the updated version of “Bush Derangement Syndrome”, an invective hurled against those feckless hippies who foolishly thought the Great War of Adventure in Iraq was going to be anything but an awesome victory bringing glory to our empire and the fearless War Hero President who boldly guided our nation against the terrorists who hate us and want to kill us because of our freedom.
Boy, I sure am glad nobody accused ME of BDS! I’d be so ashamed!
I just think it's amusing that an alleged journalist thinks the term originated here. This is a tough place to sit on the fence, yet he manages to attempt it (badly).
It's a silly way of looking at the world, but there's really nothing substantive that can be implied by any of his interactions with foreign officials as he's bringing no serious substantive views to bear in those interactions. His view is almost too silly to warrant substantive comment.
121.
Though, I kind of suspect Sugar Bear/syntax/whatever just did the equivalent of dropping a drag bunt in the 8th inning of an 11-0 game when the SP has a no-hitter going.
Ah, yes, President David French. Exhibit A for how out of touch and irrelevant Bill Kristol now is.
Sounds like a great guy to waste time fronting for.
Good for you taking up that call.
As opposed to all of the people who _want_ to be under federal investigation?
You're badly confused as to concepts. "Witch hunt" does not mean that nobody anywhere in the world did anything wrong; "witch hunt" means that no evidence has been presented, after all this time, that Trump and his inner circle are guilty of collusion.
“Go #### yourself you fat arrogant whore.”
This is one of the dumbest things I've read today...but the day is still relatively young.
Sure, but Ray and Sub-Beta Blanks just got here.
Ah, because there's nothing unique about the current situation, right?
How about this... Trump excuses himself from the Presidency while the investigation plays out. The 25th Amendment explicitly and directly gives him a manner to temporarily recuse himself from office - all he has to do is write a letter to Orin Hatch - and Mike Pence will take (or decide it is not in the US interests to take at the present time) meetings with Putin.
Once the investigation ends, one way or another, he re-assumes office...
That's your stupid definition of "witch hunt".
From the Wiki: " the word 'witch-hunt' is used as a metaphor to illustrate the brutal and ruthless way in which political opponents are denigrated and persecuted."
Your hero thinks he's being persecuted. It has nothing to do with what has or hasn't been proven yet. Dumbass.
It's regular as clockwork.... they're so in love with their long past glory days that they like to pretend they're back in law school glory days, where the ugly realty of real life doesn't matter - and they can just pretend it's just hypothetical created for them to strut their brilliance.
Meanwhile, here in the real world...
On Friday, the United States Justice Department just rendered a dozen indictments against elements of a foreign nation's intelligence service for committing clearly - even they know this - crimes.
On Monday, the President of the United States didn't cancel a meeting the leader of that foreign nation... he didn't even say boo about it. Indeed, he actually took the side of the leader of that nation against his own country's law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
This - to a Trumpkin - is not a problem.
Because they're just deranged and crazy beyond reckoning.
See, the thing is that, while tribalists might think there's an "inconsistency" in thinking this while at the same time thinking the other things I've written on this page and elsewhere, there really isn't. All of it is true. Trump's a joke, but the FBI also interfered in the election. Both things happened, as logic holds they could.. I still can't begin to see how that remains perceived as somehow "inconsistent"; the only answer is TDS.
Stupid too, don’t forget stupid. I’ve never met a smart person who supported Trump. Certainly not on this forum.
Is that what Clinton did?
Keep lying and maybe you’ll get Mike Huckabee’s fat kid’s job next. You can take a leave of absence from the Fake Law Firm.
(*) And if you don't want to believe Turley, here's Andy's beloved New York Times on the subject.
If the argument is that when *we* do it it's different then say that, instead of eliding the fact that we do it, by mindlessly repeating "influenced our election" in a Bitter Mousean way, as if the problem is the influencing per se rather than WHY an election is being influenced.
-
It's also quite hilarious that of the $1 billion or whatever that Hillary spent to try to win, folks think that a foreign government spending $95K was the real party that influenced the election. If true what does that say about how utterly incompetent Hillary and her team was?
Because (a) he's smarting over people thinking he won because of Russia -- he didn't; and (b) the collusion part of the investigation is in fact a joke, even though the hacking part isn't. Trump's obsessed with the collusion part, naturally, and too stupid to distinguish between the two in any event.
Oh?
Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the Nation of Starr or the People's Democratic Republic of Lewinsky, so I'm afraid I don't see the parallel.
You and SBB have chosen team treason. It will not be forgotten.
He didn't step aside while the investigation proceeded, as you said Trump should do. And of course, he didn't step aside when his crimes were exposed.
I'll repeat.
Sounds a really great sort to front for.
You should be proud because lord knows, nobody is more unfairly targeted or harassed by law enforcement than sitting Presidents.
Good for you, dude... finding such a deserving target for your holy faux-Voltaire.
Your belief that I'm "fronting" for him is deranged. I haven't "fronted" for him a single time.
No, the President has a much lower bar to cross. To justify such behavior he merely needs to argue that it's in our best interests. That's not the same thing as altruistic.
I have stated numerous times that I think Russia's role in the election was likely insignificant and that I believe there was no quid pro quo between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
But what happened today was absolutely sickening. He should be impeached tomorrow. If we have to perform sexual favors for Mike Pence, then so be it.
He's not playing kissy face with a foreign despot who is the obvious - and now indicted via proxies - target of the investigation.
Trump should step aside because he's meeting with - and actually fronting for - the despotic leader of a nation who is undeniably, inarguably, and and completely a central part of that investigation.
If you can find me a Clinton parallel, have at it... but I'm not aware of even the most tangential of instances of where Clinton's constitutionally prescribed job had a damn thing to do with Lewinsky.
Was he meeting with No Ma'am to prescribe a change to federal law?
Well, YR is right - you're more of a kneeler...
But everybody knows what you are.
Ironically, it's probably your best defense against being called a Trumpkin... the fact that, if you could survey every BBTF registrant and ask them to pick the place's foremost troll - it would certainly, beyond any discussion or even without allowing any OTP participant votes - be you.
But - sometimes, you need to pay for your trolling. And the Trump stink needs to be attached to you forever.
Like any good tribute act, Ray always goes back to the classic hits.
Q: How many days has Robby Mook been sitting in jail?
The straw that stirs the drink?
Sloppy wording, the point of the tweet being that Mueller hasn't tied anyone in the Trump camp to collusion.
Then what does he care what people think? He's the president. Maybe he knows more about it than you do, and he's desperately trying to deflect and project. Could that be true?
Because he's a narcissistic weirdo?
His act is essentially unchanged from the mid-1980s, certainly from no later than 1990.
No. It couldn't. I mean it could at some non-zero level, I guess, but we're talking sub-1%.
So sad that this is the fallback. It's true. But Trump is a criminal all the same.
You're an idiot. Undoubtedly.
edit... and #### your edit, shitbag.
It's difficult to find a rosetta stone - but I think I might have one.
I think it might come down to whether it's a matter of something that makes Trump look bad vs something swirling around him that needs to be defended.
Much more careful analysis will be required, but it's possible that I've cracked the code.
What's the highest value?
I pick that one.
Cracking the code would reveal that there are few if any "Trumpkins" here, so it doesn't appear that you have.
I count 5 for sure: You, Clapper, Jason, TGF (who isn't here much) and the Omega Monkey Ray. Lance might be one, also, but he doesn't elaborate.
It's like stumbling across an enigma machine the Trumpkins forgot to toss overboard.
So, this is apparently A Big Deal because now all the Trumpkins are claiming there are no Trumpkins.
Please tell me more... the bronze goddesses are spinning away.
No, the claim is nothing new.
Maybe put down the bottle?
Oh, there's no doubt you do.
Confirmation bias. He's on a planned trip overseas. He's been sound asleep while you folks were frittering your day away here.
None whatsoever, Trumpkin. Wear it.
Uh-huh.
Actually, I think I'm going to open a bottle to celebrate this momentous occasion.
But, by all means, I encourage you to spend a few sentences explaining how you're not really a Trumpkin. I think you should lay out clearly - and unfettered by adjacent grudges against amorphous groups that also hate Trump - why you are a not a Trumpkin.
You've typed many, many, many a comment in defense of him.
So, it's probably a good idea to spare one, single post explaining why you are not. You should lay out clearly and without exception or footnote why you think he's an idiot, an #######, unfit, or some combination of all. You should do what you've never done: stake out some clear space, unadulterated, as to why you are NOT a Trumpkin.
Go ahead.
My posts speak for themselves. The primary reason is that TDSers confuse not having TDS with being a "Trumpkin." It's really no more complicated than that.
I haven't typed a single word in "defense" of him. I've typed a whole lot of words analyzing his opposition, for sure.
Not cool, man.
Doxxing him as a bagman for the Summer Trump Payment to Putin?
Somebody better tell Jim.
Uh-huh.
Then it really ought to be easy for you to just compose a simple paragraph - just a few coherent sentences, really - explaining your problem with Trump.
So why can't you?
Why haven't you?
Go ahead.
We'll wait.
I'll even get you started:
Go for it.
Prove you're not a Trumpkin.
I have, a bunch of times. I did again like an hour ago.
The Republicans are the ‘you think we’re so innocent?’ party. Their leader really hasn’t given them much to worth with this week, so they’ve advanced to the line that what the Russian government did was a good thing because it exposed the evil DNC’s e-mails (and possibly stole critical campaign analytics to give to the Republican nominee, but the cult hasn’t yet said that was a good and moral act).
Where?
Repeat it for me. I cannot find it.
Um, no thanks. As with Mouse and various other posters, periodically, your frothing unwillingness/inability to read is not my concern.
Really. So now the Deep State (BBTF Division) knows that Juannity is away from his home, leaving him even more vulnerable to their criminal exploits and expertise in framing idiots and making them do treason. Does Ray not think before he posts? Wait...
No worries.
I find myself unable to reproduce things that didn't exist originally, too.
I mean, I've tried telling the lottery commission I played those number without a ticket, told the Vegas sportsbooks I placed the bet though I lack a ticket, and the SEC has been particularly impolite about my claims to unverified stock ownership... so I feel your pain.
Enablers, stooges, Quislings, apparatchiks, opportunists, trolls, fellow travelers, trigger-the-libs-asshats, etc, sure.
But nobody here is a #MAGA hat wearing true believer Trumpkin.
My father is a #MAGA hat wearing true believer actual Trumpkin. He went to see Trump speak* at Freedom Fest 2015 in Vegas and afterwards proudly announced to my mother and I, "I think I've just seen the next President of the United States".
* My mother and I decided to go shopping and stop by Grimaldi's for pizza. He might have been right about an outcome, but we made the far better choice on the day ...
I heard a minute of angry right-wing radio host Mark Levin today. I guess he's right in the middle of this chart - kind of the 'sure, he says some goofy things and he makes mistakes, but I'm not going to attack the guy every time...' level.
Hannity's No. 1 ranking on the line in a few minutes. has a chance to create a little distance from Pence, but it's a long season/administration. meanwhile, Gingrich's 'loss' will cost him some spots and could ultimately relegate him to a lesser bowl game down the road.
McConnell shouldn't be that high. He's probably about the same as Ryan, maybe even lower, since MAGA females think Ryan is handsome.
That seems likely to me, but Putin has done so much bad stuff beyond the 2016 election, and obviously after accepting today's humiliating concession from the United States, he not's going to stop. This could drag on indefinitely.
Well, with all due respect/lack of desire to go after your dad whom I've obviously never met -
I really bristle at letting the OTP's Trumpkins off the hook as if they're somehow insulated because they - excepting Clapper, who's never even gone that far - drop the VERY rare and VERY occasional 'not the way I'd have phrased it'.
In the grand scheme of things, shitbag despots have never had majorities among any national populace. They only very rarely even find highly fractious pluralities.
People can dismiss the Clown Hitler stuff all they want, but any serious reading of history - doesn't matter if you're talking about Hitler himself, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, Pot, or you name it - pretty clearly shows that the most culpable are the mealy-mouthed pretenders.
In every nation since the dawn of nations - you're inevitably going to find an alarmingly large (where that means single digit to low teens) percent of the populace not just willing, but longing for the brute despot to stick it to the "other". They cannot be helped or reasoned with. You learn to just live with them, and leave them to their rantings - in a free and democratic society, sanction or charge them when they cross the lines a civil, democratic society creates.
Then, you'll find another layer - the disaffected, the frustrated, the angry - many of whom have legitimate complaints in an agnostic vacuum. Shopkeeps in Weimar, factory owns in Italy, educated but non-noble in Tsarist Russia, etc. It sucks that they get drawn to the One Great Man Who Can Fix It, but again.... it's pretty consistent. To a certain extent, I don't blame them - lacking an oasis, they'll drink the sand.
But - most culpable?
The Rays, the SBBs, the Clappers, and the Juannitys. These and these alone really ought to bear the most morally culpable burden. The reality is that we do not hold people like the Von Papens (or the Trotskys or the Victor Emmanuels or the Kerenskys or even Tou Samouths) culpable to the extent we should.
Doesn't matter what ideology the would-be despot espouses - in fact, more often than not - they don't really even have a consistent ideology in any real sense. It's always a pragmatic application of bits and pieces.
Time and time and time and consistently over and over and over again - it is these 'respectable' people who claim they're not a Nazi... not a Stalinist... not a Francoist... not a brown shirt.... not a Pol Pot acolyte... not a Mao disciple...
They always have the same excuse. They always claim 'whattabout'. They always pretend they're standing on some higher principle - of law, of national sovereignty, of expediency...
But - the reality - and it spans the globe, it spans ideology, it spans time... it is these people who always provide the tipping point. Always. Without exception.
Name me a despotic regime and I will be happy to explain which allegedly 'respectable' so-called non-whateverkins turned it from a mob of revolutionaries into the ruling junta.
In the context of something like Nuremberg? Sure... I guess I understand why a Hjalmar Schact got acquitted.
But - it is a mistake not to hold people like Schacht.... educated.... professional... 'respectable'.... responsible for their roles.
Maybe that's where the legal splits from the moral, IDK... but it doesn't change the reality.
You always know Ray has run out steam when he falls back to "Hillary lost the election" as some sort of defensive talking point.
Hannity and Pence are still behind Trump, but this performance was so indefensible that even the sycophantiast sycophants like Gingrich are eyeing the exits. Of course, we saw that once before with the Access Hollywood tape, and most of the spineless losers got back on board the Trump train shortly after that.
This is true, and it speaks to their (lack of) character. But the almost certain reason they returned shortly after that tape was because
Step 1: Trump's free fall in the polls proved to be temporary; and
Step 2: Trump won the election.
Of course their complete lack of character will eventually mean that the Gingriches will return to the fold. But if Trump had lost the election his support among politicians would have completely evaporated, and if the polls were to show serious evidence that he was hurting the GOP as a whole, I doubt if these sycophants' loyalty will have been proven to have been anything more than skin deep. Even Hannity can always find some new mancrush to attach himself to. He was polluting the airwaves long before Trump emerged as a political force. From Ryan on up on Nate's list, what you see there are are just classic kiss up / kick down types. With them their attitude towards Trump is strictly business.
Ray gives a mainstream news channel's official public statement more retroactive leeway for contextual latitude and imprecise wording than he gives other posters on a baseball chat board. Yet weirdly...
Ray, four days ago:
The Fox News tweet misrepresented the Washington Post's reporting, and it misrepresented the progress and results of the Mueller investigation. But Ray knows that if you read their words in the right light, you'll see that Fox & Friends' sloppy hearts were in the right place when they tweeted it. And also when they silently deleted it.
His quoted comment was also stupid on two levels. First, he has apparently never heard of the metaphor of the straw that broke the camel's back. Second, the idea he keeps expressing that winning an election is a sign of intelligence/competence/etc. The latter is a bad faith argument on his part, because he never pre-Trump pretended that elections were intelligence or competence contests. In fact, he'd usually sneeringly argue in his nihilism-posing-as-libertarianism way that they're lying contests or the like.
The Rays, the SBBs, the Clappers, and the Juannitys. These and these alone really ought to bear the most morally culpable burden. The reality is that we do not hold people like the Von Papens (or the Trotskys or the Victor Emmanuels or the Kerenskys or even Tou Samouths) culpable to the extent we should.
Doesn't matter what ideology the would-be despot espouses - in fact, more often than not - they don't really even have a consistent ideology in any real sense. It's always a pragmatic application of bits and pieces.
Time and time and time and consistently over and over and over again - it is these 'respectable' people who claim they're not a Nazi... not a Stalinist... not a Francoist... not a brown shirt.... not a Pol Pot acolyte... not a Mao disciple...
They always have the same excuse. They always claim 'whattabout'. They always pretend they're standing on some higher principle - of law, of national sovereignty, of expediency...
I was watching Trump's shameless moral equivocations today, and it hit me like a thunderbolt: 70 years ago, that could've been Wallace speaking.
But this time not George Wallace, but Henry Wallace, who once took a guided tour of the Siberian slave labor camps and compared them to----the TVA. Although in Wallace's case he wasn't saying that the TVA was as bad as those labor camps, but that those labor camps were just as praiseworthy as the TVA.
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