Thoughts for the Day, January 16, 2025: RIP Bob Uecker

Onion of the Day: Governor Whitmer.

Per Bridge Michigan, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday renewed her calls for more investments in roads and economic development, promising to work with incoming President Donald Trump and new Republican state House leaders in the year ahead.

“This is a serious moment,” Whitmer said in a speech at the Detroit Auto Show, which her office billed as a major address to lay out the “road ahead” for Michigan before Trump takes office later this month….

Whitmer struck a bipartisan tone as she spelled out her top priorities for 2025: building off of existing corporate incentive programs designed to lure big businesses to Michigan, coming up with a long-term road funding solution and collaborating with world leaders on potential Trump tariffs to protect Michigan’s auto industry from backlash.

She indicated that she’s prepared to try again on a long-term road funding plan, which was a key plank of her winning 2018 gubernatorial campaign. The governor in 2020 adopted a $3.5 billion road bonding plan after the Legislature dismissed her initial proposal for a major gas tax hike, but money from those bond sales is running out.

Brokering a roads deal will require Democrats and Republicans alike to “recognize some hard truths,” she said, arguing a workable long-term plan will likely mean a mix of new revenue sources and “fiscally responsible cuts” to other areas of the state budget.

The above is such Bull S**t. For the last two years Whitmer could have gotten all these things done. She had a Democrat president, she had Democrat control of both branches of state legislature, plus a Democrat AG and a Democrat secretary of state. For her to call these her top priorities is an offense to the citizens of Michigan. If they were her top priority, they would have been done over the last two years.

She allowed the Democrat controlled legislature to take six months off to campaign for Biden and Harris as well as themselves. All to no avail, as Trump won Michigan, and the Republicans took back control of the state House. In the meantime, we are left with no funding plan for “fixing the damn roads”, and we are destined to remain the 49^th state as it relates to government transparency. And to think she has eyes on a presidential run.

I am giving her a Second Onion of the Day because she thinks she can pull the wool over our eyes with her rhetoric.

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Question of the Day: Whatever happened to the report on the Flint Water Crisis that my favorite AG Nessel promised would be released in 2024?

Answer: Not a thing. And don’t expect it anytime soon in the coming years.

Here are excerpts from an email that Dick Posthumus sent out last week to a select group of people. Posthumus is a former Lt. Governor under Engler and senior advisor to Governor Snyder.

…Attorney General advised everyone publicly that she intended to put forth a report to the people about the Flint Water prosecutions and distribute more materials as they were certain there was more information the public deserved to know that was damning to the defendants. She said she would issue that report in 2024.

Well, that year has come and gone. And again, her words were used for political gain and no other purpose…This political persecution damaged the personal and professional lives of these individuals over the past many years…We must heal, we must move on, we must do better. We cannot let the Attorney General and her staff continue to use her office as a political whipping tool to use at her discretion. The cost is too high – both to her enemies and to the people she claims to be helping.

Dana Nessel proved she is willing to use her position, and the powers entrusted to her position to punish those who don’t align with her political positions.

It is time for the people to get the answers they deserve and the AG’s office to stop hiding behind the cloak of lawsuits. They can answer the questions. There is no need to wait for the lawsuit they claim will be dismissed to answer the relevant questions. If they are confident it will be dismissed, then why wait?…We are all deserving of this. I wish you the best in 2025!

For over three years I have been expressing outrage about Nessel’s criminal prosecution in the Flint Water Crisis. Nessel spent over $50 million trying to prosecute people in criminal court in a case that should not have been filed. The state settled the case for $640 million in civil court. She damaged the reputations and lives of people who were just trying to do their jobs as civil servants. Her case against these civil servants was thrown out by every level of court in the state, and twice by the Supreme Court.

Nessel refuses to provide answers and information about the cases that she filed and the $50 million of taxpayer money she wasted. I am not going to hold my breath waiting for her report.

Dick Posthumus gets my Orchid of the Day for reminding us of AG Nessel’s broken promise.

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Quotes of the Day: In honor of Bob Uecker who passed away today at the age of 90. Uecker, who transformed his futility as a baseball player into a successful second career as a baseball broadcaster, humorist and comic actor in television, film and commercials, died Jan. 16 at his home in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. He is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and the World Wrestling Federation Hall of Fame as an announcer. He appeared on Johnny Carson’s show over 100 times.

From 1976 to 1982, Mr. Uecker was part of ABC’s “Monday Night Baseball” broadcasting team, often jousting good-naturedly with Howard Cosell, known for his large vocabulary and sometimes pompous manner. Once, when Cosell used the word “truculent,” he asked Mr. Uecker if he knew what it meant.

“Sure I do,” Mr. Uecker replied. “If you had a truck, and I borrowed it, that would be a truck-you-lent.”

“I knew when my career was over. In 1965 my baseball card came out with no picture.”–

“The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.”

“I remember one time I’m batting against the Dodgers in Milwaukee. They lead, 2 – 1, it’s the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two out and the pitcher has a full count on me. I look over to the Dodger dugout and they’re all in street clothes.”–

“I hit a grand slam off Ron Herbel and when his manager Herman Franks came out to get him, he was bringing Herbel’s suitcase.”

“Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.”

“They sent me up there without a bat and told me to try for a walk. When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.”

And his two most famous quotes.

“You know, one of the best things about being an ex-big-leaguer is getting freebies to the game,” he says in one commercial, pulling a ticket from his pocket. “Call the front office, and bingo!” An usher approaches, saying, “You’re in the wrong seat, buddy, come on.” Mr. Uecker confidently says, “I must be in the front row!”

In the commercial’s final scene, he is sitting by himself at the top of the stadium, ever ebullient as he declares to no one, “Good seats, hey, buddy?”

Mr. Uecker also played Harry Doyle, a whiskey-drinking broadcaster in the 1989 baseball comedy “Major League.” When a pitcher, played by Charlie Sheen, throws a wild pitch that bounces off the backstop, Mr. Uecker — in an improvised line — says, “Ju-u-u-u-st a bit outside.”

See my Video of the Day

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Quotes of the Day: See above from Bob Uecker

Orchid of the Day: Former Lt. Governor Dick Posthumus. See above under Question of the Day.

Onion of the Day: Governor Whitmer. See above.

Second Onion of the Day: Governor Whitmer. See above.

Lyrics of the Day: “Do you still remember December's foggy freeze
When the ice that clings on to your beard Was screaming agony?

And you snatch your rattling last breaths With deep-sea diver sounds
And the flowers bloom like madness in the spring”

If you think you know the answer, indicate your answer in the comment section below.

Answer to January 14, Lyrics of the Day: Night Moves by Bob Seger.

Question of the Day: Whatever happened to the report on the Flint Water Crisis that my favorite AG Nessel promised would be released in 2024? See above.

Video of the Day: Miller Lite Bob Uecker's Front Row Commercial

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