Bullpen Bulletins!

Taking just a few minutes here before I head out for more umpiring tonight to blurt out a few things...

• ITEM: SPUDS avoid being mercy-ruled for second consecutive week! My softball team, the Smiling Potatoes of death, lost to Lab Rats 12-5 last night. The loss was not a surprise. The score was—Lab Rats have historically wiped the proverbial floor with us, but yesterday we avoided going down by more than ten runs and thus being mercy-ruled into an early exit. Just like we did last week! Who-hoo! Manufactired triumph. I was 0-for-3 with two bee-stinger grounders and one solidly hit forceout grounder.
• ITEM: Felon 47 speaks to press in proof-of-life appearance. On the heels of yet another unexplained visit to Walter Reed Medical Center for a "checkup," Felon47 vanished from public view for a week. Again. He resumed his public lying and shitposting yesterday, so presumably he's recovered from this latest round of treatments for whatever it is he needs treatment for that the White House is hiding from the world. In the absence of any information from this, the allegedly most transparent administration in the history of the universe (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume Felon47 is undergoing regular blood transfusions from sacrificial infants and the drained lifeforce of conned "volunteers" from fundraising emails. I mean, there's got to be some reason this monument to unhealth is still alive.
• ITEM: Is DNI a real job? Felon47 has nominated yet another corrupt, incompetent crony to a cabinet-level post, this time to replace Tulsi Gabbard as "Director of National Intelligence." There are myriad reasons Bill Pulte should never be confirmed to any job ever, let alone the DNI, but it does bring up the question: Why do we have a "Director of National Intelligence?" It is a redundant position, basically a human aggregator, to be the filter through which the actual intelligence agencies of the US government report things to the president. One of the many overreactions to 9/11 was to create this job, which didn't need to exist before, but because George W. Bush was too dumb to understand his Presidential Daily Briefs that included reports form the various intelligence agencies, it was thought that adding a cabinet officer to personally tell things to the president was better. Competent presidents don't need this. Incompetent ones ignore it. Criminally corrupt incompetent ones (well, one twice) appoint sycophantic toadies who make sure nothing too complex even reaches the Oval Office, basically ensuring the opposite result from the intent of creating the position. Among the many post-Felon47 reforms we need to take up, eliminating a lot of 9/11 overreactions might only make it to the tertiary group of needs, but axing DNI might be on the list.
• ITEM: I am bad at time management! I'd intended more items here, including one on Monday's umpiring and one on Tuesday's fun night out with K&E at the Mariner game, but it's already 5:30 and I'm running late. Got to go deal with more playoff umpiring tonight, hopefully no one will get too wound up and macho about their games.