Derek Bauman

@Gumbogumbobonk @bungler1241 @BurggrabenH @StateDept Clearly half opinion half factual statement. But sure I’ll stipulate to it. And parties are reacting accordingly as I stated. Point being, Euro wine sippers opining clearly don’t have sway like they’ve had in the past. They’ll have to deal with it as the ground rules have changed

@derekbauman @bungler1241 @BurggrabenH @StateDept Like bombing Iran with no plan, no prior collaboration and putting American lives on the line? Like those interests?

SECRETARY RUBIO: The U.S. is constantly asked to help in wars and we have. But when we had a need, it didn’t get positive responses from NATO. A couple leaders said that Iran was not Europe’s war. Well, Ukraine isn’t our war, yet we’ve contributed more to that fight than anyone.

@Gumbogumbobonk @bungler1241 @BurggrabenH @StateDept Right. So it’s all shades of grey words on paper. All parties are going to consider actions of others and then react accordingly. In any case I don’t think this particular administration will be shamed into acting in what they perceive to not be in the best interest of the U.S.

@derekbauman @bungler1241 @BurggrabenH @StateDept The 2% mark was a guideline until 2014, then it became a commitment. All NATO countries spend 2% on defense and are now pushing it to 5.5%.

@BurggrabenH @StateDept And NATO members defaulted on their commitments to defense spending as a % of GDP. Trump wanted to dip out and was talked out of it. So at this point they’re clearly making a case for a bargaining position. Countries act. Or not. And the chips fall where they may.

The Trump administration is veering into outright disinformation. A few facts: 1.The U.S. signed the Budapest Memorandum (1994), under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances. Walking away from Ukraine now undermines those commitments and future non-proliferation credibility. The UK was also a signatory. 2.U.S. military and financial support to Ukraine has been materially reduced since late 2024 — this is publicly verifiable via the Ukraine Support Tracker. 3.NATO is a defensive alliance. Article 5 has been invoked exactly once — after 9/11 — and allies responded with substantial military support to the United States. If you want to argue for a policy shift, do it honestly. Don’t rewrite history to justify it. You broke it, you own it.

@Gumbogumbobonk @bungler1241 @BurggrabenH @StateDept And NATO countries did more than the same when they didn’t live up to their % GDP spending commitments. So clearly the administration is making a case.

@bungler1241 @BurggrabenH @StateDept As an assurance, it was a statement of intent that a country will behave a certain way. If broken, the primary consequence is diplomatic (a loss of trust/credibility), but the US did that without the need of the Memorandum.

@JunkyardTitan_ @DakarAdana @SlopHq This is the correct take. Kudos!

Of course, but we’re not serious and that’s why any public transit project will always make headlines for going x billion over budget because we are really poor at designing and building them. If the next president that gets into office signs a $1 trillion public transit bill I bet we’d be really fucking efficient at building transit and the unit cost would go down by orders of magnitude.

every american transit agency thinks its project is uniquely complex. no it isn't. cities denser than yours with harder geology and older utilities built subways for a fifth of the price. the complexity is not in the ground it's in the org chart

@ReboundRundown How can you fear a team that refuses to play anyone in state?

“People need to fear us in the state of Ohio. It’s the best basketball job in the state of Ohio, and I think it truly is.” Jerrod Calhoun on bringing Cincinnati basketball back:

@glenn_kinley Great coach’s answer. Also: No

Love this from #Illini head coach Brad Underwood - asked if he has any issue/finds it unfair to have to play Houston IN Houston in the Sweet 16. "I could care less... I'm an old JUCO ball coach. I drove on 16 passenger fans. I drove from Dodge City, Kansas to Mesa, Arizona for a basketball game... If you had told me back then that I'm getting to coach basketball in the Sweet 16 and play Houston - I would sign up for it, I would crawl to get there." Says regardless of where the game is, Illinois would/will need to play well to beat the Cougars. (Video from NCAA)

@williamstricky1 @CBoxSports Take a shot at basic comprehension skills.

@CBoxSports Taking shots at your last situation within the week of leaving that job is such an all time move. Tough watch for the residents of Logan.

"Utah State is a Top 30 job in America... but I can tell you this: when we got the #9 seed after winning 28 games and a regular season and tournament title, that was pretty telling. The game has changed, college basketball has changed forever." -Jerrod Calhoun

@Blanco22Bandit @balldontstop Yes no Mark Price’s, John Stockton’s or Jason Williams’s permitted. GTFO

@balldontstop The Association can’t have a 6 foot white boy torching the league. It doesn’t fit their agenda. Makes perfect sense to me as to why he hasn’t been signed to a long term deal

It's a travesty that Mac McClung isn't on an NBA roster with a real role 🤦🏽‍♂️ What happened to rewarding production and being a dog?

@Lytherian Go to Europe play another 10 years. No time to waste though.

I feel like McClung is in basketball hell rn. He’s too good for the G-league but not good enough for the NBA

@dlswhynot @mcuban @DrDiGiorgio See: MLB. Or Euro soccer. You end up with a handful of super clubs and the perennial also rans.

@mcuban @DrDiGiorgio Salary cap is my favorite. Owners admitting they can’t trust each other .

Mark, you are getting close to understanding why single payer cannot work. But I fundamentally disagree with the idea that we could ever just "know" costs well enough to make it work. Hayek was right about this. The relevant knowledge is too dispersed, too local, and too dynamic to ever be gathered and priced correctly by central planners. Take basketball. Imagine single payer basketball. The government is the only purchaser of basketball entertainment in all its forms. Fans are not allowed to just buy a ticket to the Mavs game. Instead, a central office decides who gets to attend and hands out tickets based on "need." The central planners also handle the TV deals, merchandising, concessions, and every other revenue stream. Everything goes through the government, with no out of pocket cost to any consumer. Now teams no longer compete for fans on price, experience, convenience, or innovation. They submit cost reports to Washington explaining what it allegedly costs to run a game. But here is the problem. If there is no market price for tickets, media rights, parking, merchandise, or concessions, how exactly do you decide what the game is worth? How do you decide what players should be paid? How do you know whether a courtside seat is underpriced, overpriced, or priced just right? You do not. You are guessing. So bureaucrats step in and decide the approved reimbursement for a regular season game, a playoff game, courtside access, halftime entertainment, parking, and concessions. What happens next? If the approved rates are too low, teams do not magically become leaner and more innovative. They cut where fans can feel it. Fewer games. Worse arenas. Less staff. Delayed upgrades. Lower quality. Longer waits. Less access. Maybe smaller market teams shut down altogether. If the approved rates are too high, you do not get efficiency either. You get lobbying. Every team hires consultants to prove that its fan base is poorer, sicker, more rural, more complex, or otherwise deserving of special payment adjustments. Soon the league is no longer about basketball. It is about coding, compliance, modifiers, subsidies, carveouts, and political influence. Teams make money not by pleasing fans, but by persuading Washington that their costs are uniquely deserving of reimbursement. And once government is the only buyer, there is no real price discovery left. There is only political bargaining disguised as pricing. The Knicks get one deal. Rural teams get another. Old arenas get subsidies. Favored constituencies get carveouts. Every interest group insists that without one more special adjustment the whole sport will collapse. Fans are told this is fair because nobody has to pay at the gate. But of course they still pay. They pay through taxes. They pay through rationing. They pay through fewer choices. They pay in lower quality. They pay by being told which arena they can use, which game they qualify for, and how long they have to wait. That is the key point. Knowing the accounting cost of hosting a basketball game does not tell you the right price of a ticket. Price is not cost. Price emerges from supply, demand, scarcity, quality, preference, and competition. A central planner can know what it "costs" to turn on the lights, pay security, and clean the arena. That still tells him nothing about what a seat is worth to fans, what kind of experience teams should offer, which franchises are efficient, or where new arenas should be built. Healthcare is even less suited to central planning than basketball. It is more heterogeneous, more personal, more local, and far more dependent on dispersed knowledge. The fantasy is always the same: if only the people at the top had better data, they could set the right prices. No, they could not. They would still be guessing, just with nicer spreadsheets.

@WeighTheStreet @mcuban @DrDiGiorgio Like why do I have to go to an actual dentist office to get a cleaning. Why can’t the hygienist have their own little office and refer patients when they encounter something that needs further attention. Dental cartel is just as big a racket as medical.

High health care costs have come as a result of over-regulation raising the cost to all layers of business. We have created high barriers of entry into both the labor(doctors) and entrepreneurial(investor/ownership) markets. When high barriers to entry exist to the level that is today, competition is limited at an exponential rate. High cost of becoming a doctor, pushes wages up, and high cost of running a hospital, pushes expenses up, and both increase the cost to the consumer. These regulations have not provided a material in increase quality or stability, yet societies faith in regulators and bureaucrats has continued to grow and give them more power.

@DocBottsNY @mcuban That’s inherently false because the wealthy can always pay for an additional private policy on top of their public coverage or pay cash for a higher level of service. And in either case would benefit from transparency of cost structure & pricing.

Anyone that believes central planning is the way forward is not American in ideas. Your ideas are socialist and incompatible with the will of the many. You favor the will of the “expert, elite” few. Single payor is the end of democratic principles of exchange. It’s been shown in this country to increase cost, the socialist ACA, and to diminish care. @DutchRojas @realdocspeaks @anish_koka @txsportsdoc

Single payer COULD cut cost and improve care but there are 2 fundamental issues. 1. All plans proposed have placed the Sec of HHS in charge of the program. You can't have a political appointee in that position and it's hard to de-politiicize HC in this country 2. They assume that they can get providers and specialists to accept whatever rates they set. You are talking about organizations that in most cases, don't even know their costs. Why ? They don't want to know their costs. For lots of reasons to long to dig into here Proponents of M4A have to first get hospitals to the point where they can define all their costs and do a Bill of Materials for procedures. You can't negotiate a price for all Americans if you don't know what your costs are It's Shark Tank 101. So we get a stalemate. Politicians don't do the work needed. Hospitals and providers avoid the work needed Other countries started on their path to universal care decades and decades ago. When healthcare was much simpler technically and fiscally. If senators won't support the Break Up Big Medicine Bill or anything comparable , there is no chance of getting to single payer. Our politicians don't have the backbone to do what is needed. You can call out all but Hawley and warren. No one else has uttered a syllable in support

@PastorMarvy Tells you it ain’t that easy. Lots of bluffs have been called.

Why China chose not to take over Taiwan in this window still eludes me.

@HoodiGarland So glad Max made the shot lol

This angle of James Harden’s pass deadass gives me chills man

This is the Cavs bench in a close game in the final stretch: Donovan Mitchell, James Harden, Sam Merrill and Max Strus all communicating, the Rockets are COOKED 😂

HOW did James Harden make this pass?! 🤯 In midair. Behind the back. Without looking. Just RIDICULOUS from The Beard.

@ariel_oseran You do realize this is AI don’t you.

Iran announces its readiness to establish “a regional security and military union with its dear neighbors,” without the presence of the U.S. or Israel. The Iranian Armed Forces Spokesman said in a statement in Arabic: “Dear Muslim brothers, we do not need a country that is thousands of kilometers away to ensure our region's security, nor do we need a country that views Islamic countries as cash cows. What good has America and its bases in the region brought you?” The spokesman added: “We must learn from the mistakes of the past and the lack of supportive force which caused the Arabs' defeat in the 1967 and 1973 wars. We must unite to ensure our security and establish a comprehensive defense union.”

@c8812051 @Reds @JoeyVotto Dude could not be more Cincinnati.

@derekbauman @Reds @JoeyVotto You nailed it! Bravo!👏

To: Cincinnati From: @JoeyVotto

@Reds @JoeyVotto Thanks JV! And @Reds please find this man an official role. He and the people clearly want it. The universe demands it.

@Reds @JoeyVotto Bro is an enigma. Has FU money & just chills in a sparsely decorated, though large, bachelor pad clad in contractor white paint with dog & a hoodie 1-taking a video while sitting on the floor with the phone probably propped up on a half full Diet Coke can. Joey MF Votto 💪🏼❤️🤍