LaBombo

I.o.M., baby!!! Virtually tax-free, and a ripping annual bike race to boot. Suck it, pinkos!!! Edit: Also, the official language of IoM English, which I've been told by British in-laws is much easier for most Americans to learn than pretty much any other foreign language.

I have a good friend there. We talk about quite a few different things. Once in a while it's about government, including taxes. Our economic situations have more similarities than differences, and we've come to the conclusion that he's probably paying a significantly higher overall non-federal tax rate in Chicago than I am in the Twin Cities. I'm not going to enter into the class warfare fray. Instead I'll just offer the fact that while his higher property tax rate plays a part in the overall rate difference, a significant chunk of that difference comes from Chicago's absurd (and yes, regressive) combined sales tax rate of 10.25%, which is the highest in the nation. And for what it's worth, our discussions have focused less on whether we as individuals are paying the right amount than they have on whether the local taxpayers are seeing a reasonable return on what they're paying into the government. I suspect we're not the only taxpayers who are equally or more concerned with what we're paying for and whether it's working for everyone than we are with how much we're paying.

Well, since you brought it up... you also missed my point about Greenwald, which was that he was ONE EXAMPLE, as I stated in that post, one of many on the left who faulted some in the media for their Manchurian Candidate conspiracy theories and overblown predictions of the Mueller report's contents and repercussions. And Marshall (your chosen 'counter-anecdote') defaming Greenwald as a white supremacist in order to invalidate his media take was an embarrassment to himself and to TPM. Also, despite your protestations, Greenwald's work (yes, even recent) and his ties to the left (he's a big fan of Noam Chomsky, for example) absolutely place Glenn Greenwald squarely on the left end of the political spectrum. This all ties together with my larger point: I firmly believe that false information is not made valid, relevant, or noble just because it is damaging to Trump (or any other bad person, ftm). At best, at its most defensible, it is just more collateral damage of the Trump presidency, as the media's DNA gradually corrupts from reporting and rational opinion to false reporting and hyperbole. With regard to the policing of rhetoric, the left is opening itself up to its own standard in that regard. Specifically criticizing Trump's rhetoric dehumanizing only the murdering, beheading monsters of MS-13, for example, was not a great look for the normally savvy Pelosi. Also, it would be good for everyone to be clear that my issue is not with Craig for posting what he did, in what I assume was good faith, but with the person who initially dug up an old, fabricated take and put it out there as a new Trump horror to coincide with current headlines about immigration. tldr version of all this: Countering Trump's dishonesty with more dishonesty is bad, and will harm our nation in the long run. (And for the record, I think you're a good dude as well, and very thoughtful but occasionally in inverse proportion to your sometimes visceral partisanship. And when I fired the phrase "out of your depth" without aiming it carefully in the Greenwald post, it was in reference to that inversion, not an attack on your intellect or ability to make arguments to support your views. You'll still take exception, I'm sure, but at least we'll be clear on what you're taking exception to. PS Wish you well in your pursuit of the clerkship.

Yeah. There are the individual question marks, and then there's the good news/bad news of finally having a real DH again. Good news is that you get 500 really good AB's in AL parks, bad news is that in NL parks, the lineup looks kinda…. nekked without him.

I was disappointed as well. A Marwin-Astu-Cruz ninth guarantees you're not going down without a fight.

Our plus-sized sleeve.

"But the trajectory...."

Incentive clause in his contract. Means he's working harder.

Oh, crap. My bad. Had the game on while spring cleaning and everything was going great. Sit down for 30 seconds with my feet up and we're down 2-1. Sorry.

My post offered the suggestion that factually incorrect messages regarding Trump should not be repeated, for multiple reasons. In your haste to compare the Trump administration to the Nazis, you have ALSO managed to equate false anti-Trump messages to the statement "Nazis were horrible", which you are therefore inarguably asserting is a false statement as well. To clarify, with this comparison you are claiming that "Nazis were horrible" is a false statement. I disagree strongly with that trivialization, if not outright defense, of Nazi atrocities.

No, not in the least. Like Lev and I both said, one bad thing about Trump being untrue doesn't make him a good guy, or anything close. But it's unlikely that the Twitterati will make everything swell by ginning up bs like the "animals" deception. In fact, I would argue that stuff likes this makes things a bit worse, in a couple of ways: First, this item is recycled, so it's not only not going to change the mind of anyone who heard it the first time, it's decreasing the signal to noise ratio of what people are taking in from the media in general, and from legit people pushing back against Trump in particular. Second, it's handing Trump something akin to the "fake news" that he's so fond of playing up. The less ammo he has for a blanket discrediting of ALL negative coverage of him, the better off the country is. Third, and probably most controversial... with each day that passes without the planet being reduced to a dead cinder on Trump's watch, it becomes a little more possible that there will be a future after he's out of office. Until then, the less damage done to political discourse the better. And yes, in playground parlance, 'Trump started it!' with some of his crazy talk dating back to the campaign, but I'm hoping the media won't follow him over the cliff. That way we'll have one less casualty of his administration whenever it's over.

"US President Donald Trump has said immigrant gang members are "not people" but "animals". He was responding during a White House event to a point made by a California sheriff about the MS-13 gang, which was started in the 1980s by immigrants from Central America." - 17 May 2018. So the old one that's not about asylum seekers. Slow news day in the Twitterverse, I guess.

Did Trump finally say this for real, or is this just a repeat of a year ago when he called dangerous criminals like the MS-13 beheaders "animals"? Hey, I'm all for recycling. But genuinely toxic Trump comments are a renewable resource, so there's no need to go digging knockoffs out of the trash when a new one is probably about to be harvested.

Years of practice? Jedi mind trick, aka "These aren't the pitches you're looking for" ? Astudillo caught daydreaming about running the 100 for Venezuela in the 2020 Olympics?

RoRo!!!!!!!!!!! For the Win!!!

Sparing him one more plunkin'? Fwiw, I was hoping to have seen him by now too, but the shorter bench and Cruz's standing as heir apparent to the Chili Davis "Break Glass in Case of Defensive Emergency" role must have made RoBa err on the side of caution.

On the contrary, Rogers seemed to be saving his best sequence of pitches for your return. Well done.

As much any other one observable thing about Baldelli, reliever usage (and overuse) is pretty close to the top of my list of things I hope he gets right.

And, as a bonus, he did not see his shadow, so no Tax Day blizzard this year.

No worries. Baldelli wisely maneuvering Falvine into a position where they'll be forced to go out and find another reliever before the ASB.

When Berrios doesn't want to come out of the game, he's competitive. When the gynormous Pineda doesn't want to come out, he's terrifying... ... is sort of what I got out of the FSN commentary, anyway.

Happy birthday, you crotchety old so-and-so! Now finish your cake and go get those Millennials off your lawn.

He's definitely more likely to brag about it.

It's very commendable of Biden to meet his responsibility. But when he does, I hope that he doesn't put his hands on responsibility's shoulders or smell its hair.