Left Coast Sports Babe

The NCAA announced a four year “show cause” order for former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh over recruiting violations, which will effectively ban Harbaugh from coaching until August 2028.

Jim Harbaugh has a FIVE year, $80 million contract with the NFL Los Angeles Chargers.

Yeah, that’ll teach him.

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“I really needed to see Steve Kornacki predicting medals on NBC Prime Time coverage instead of actual coverage of Olympic events” said absolutely no one.

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Can’t stand Donald Trump but admit as a former reality star that he knows sometimes how to play appearances for entertainment value. But J.D. Vance makes Mike Pence look charismatic. Even thinking flies are too bored to go near him.

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About a month ago there were nonstop national media stories about Biden not being visible enough, all focused on his age and if he was fit for office. Now Trump is basically AWOL and media just shrugs.

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Imagine if Joe Biden were still running for re-election, holed up in White House for week, then announced he would do one event, in “swing” state of Massachusetts. I’m sure media would be as tolerant & lowkey as they are now about DonOld Trump doing 1 rally this week in Montana.

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I’m okay with differing political voices on television. But the problem with interviewing people like Stephen Miller, as MSNBC’s Ari Melber did today, is that they are so incapable of telling the truth on ANYTHING that fact checking them is like trying to put out a three-alarm fire with a water pistol.

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Every time GOP lies & says Democrats are responsible for problems at the border, reporters should remind them, Dem worked with conservative GOP Senator James Lankford on a border-immigration bill. That would have passed if Donald Trump hadn’t ordered GOP Senators to scuttle it.

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JD Vance attacking 24-yr National Guard vet Tim Walz for not going to Iraq. In Hillbilly Elegy, JD on HIS time in Iraq as “public affairs marine.” “Sometimes I’d escort civilian press, but generally I’d take photos or write short stories about individual marines or their work”

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JD Vance in Wisconsin asked the “why would someone want to have a beer with you” question. “They’d want to have a beer with me because I actually do like to drink beer.” He is SO bad at this…. #cringe

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Another great thing about Tim Walz….. For millions of Americans, he just assured that Democrats win the “who would you like to have a beer with” question.

Remember when Donald Trump complained that having to sit in a courtroom was keeping him from campaigning. Now he’s got all the time in the world, and DonOld is sitting at his resort, or maybe golfing, and campaigning maybe once a week.

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GOP is trying to paint Tim Walz as a left-wing radical. Since when did it become radical to think all kids should be able to eat a school lunch. Maybe Republicans are taking Jesus saying “suffer the little children” a bit too literally?

San Francisco Giants today were 1-13 with RISP. And 4-25 with RISP so far on the road tri where they are 3-2.

Well, silver lining as a political SF Giants baseball fan, not looking like I’ll have a lot of distraction from the election this October.

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Meanwhile we’re down to the last four days of the France Olymipcs. Four days until Parisians get their city back. And until Americans no longer need to pretend to care about sports they only watch for a couple weeks – often only in highlights – every four years.

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Not only did Tim Walz make an A+ Dad joke about J.D. Vance and couches. But he added to his cool Dad cred with the underreported follow-up aside “See what I did there?

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And how many Americans today googled “JD Vance” and “couch?”

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Minnesota has an embarrassment of riches in the comedy dept

Amy Klobuchar is smart and funny Tina Smith is smart and funny. And there was that Senator named Al Franken.

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“Mind your own damn business” is gonna be a best seller on t-shirts.

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GOP will throw everything they can at Tim Walz. But when you have Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin united in support of someone, that’s, to use Dark Brandon’s words, a BFD.

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Tim Walz is what J.D. Vance pretends to be.

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Trump does not seem happy. His fundraising email today. “TIM WALZ WILL BE THE WORST VICE PRESIDENT IN HISTORY!” – He got part of it right “Tim Walz will be Vice President.”

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Fox News actually trying to make big deal out of Tim Walz’s arrest for DUI 29 years ago. (He has since quit drinking alcohol.) Understand Fox & GOP now, because of his daughter Liz, is disowning Dick Cheney, who had two DUI’s. But have they forgotten George W. Bush had one too?

GOP pretends Tim Walz is “controversial” as a Governor. Uh, Walz won re-election by 52.27% to 44.61% So maybe not quite Amy Klobuchar numbers in Minnesota but these days 7.5% in anything but the bluest or reddest states is a landslide.

Heavily favored Simone Biles won her 11th Olympic medal , silver in the floor exercise. Then in a lovely moment of sportsmanship, Simone bowed on the podium with bronze medalist Jordan Chiles to gold medalist Rebeca Andrade. Gracious losing is underrated. Especially now in USA.

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Returned to US Sunday from being in England for a week and took only about 30 minutes of TV to start REALLY missing BBC Olympic coverage.

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Although in England, awful story last week of three young girls stabbed to death by 17-yr old born in Wales.

Far-right has been using social media to spread disinformation, including lies that he was a Muslim immigrant, to incite violence in the country. Sounds too sadly familiar.

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Has Donald Trump attacked all Team USA Olympic silver and bronze winners as “suckers and losers” yet?

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From NY Times “Why Josh Shapiro Would Make Such a Difference for Kamala Harris” Mark Penn

Yes, the same Mark Penn who completely FUBARed Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign and didn’t even know California primary did proportional delegates and not winner take all.

Rachel Maddow and Marc Elias reminded us Monday,. Donald Trump doesn’t seem that concerned about actually winning the election in November. DonOld is trying to make sure he has election officials in place to steal the election for him.

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Not getting why RJK Jr. coming forward now with the bear cub story. Is he planning to run again in 2028 with Kristi Noem?

Sherrod Brown is taking heat from some Democrats because he is skipping the Democratic Naitonal Convention.

Sherrod is a very good Democratic Senator, none of Joe Manchin’s games. . But Ohio is now red state. and friends there say he’s only Dem who can win statewide. Heard a Trump supporter at RNC say she’d vote for him.

Have no problem with Brown’s decision. Or if he doesn’t campaign with Harris. What matters is winning in November and keeping the seat blue.

The Blake Snell SF Giants last minute experiment might have had the most bizarre results of any single season yet.

And maybe it just means Snell gets the really big bucks from the Dodgers next year, who can defer a contract and ignore a bad start.

Or is it too soon to talk about Snelll resigning with SF Giants in part due to his bromance with Patrick Bailey?

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Snell threw his no-hitter a day after Logan Webb won with a 1-0 shutout.. So SF Giants fans might be forgiven for asking “did he win?”

(and yes, Giants did win, 1-0.)

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Been in England for the first week of Olympics. Will be good to be home but damn will I miss BBC coverage. Actual sporting event focus instead of on interview and holding the best events until so late at night that most people either already know who won or went to bed or both

Just in case anyone was thinking they had an excuse for not voting this year….

Former President Jimmy Carter has told his family he’s trying to stay alive long enough so that he can vote for Kamala Harris.

George Santos was trending on Twitter.. Does he think he’s going to replace J.D. Vance?

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Listening now to Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz and Andy Beshear on top of Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Gretchen Whitmer, reminded again that Democrats have a VERY deep bench.

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Hey GOP. If you really believe Americans don’t agree with Democratic policies and goals, stop fighting and cheating so hard and let Dems win the White House, Senate and House. Then after 4 years you can see what the country thinks of the results.

You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, Has Trump decided who he is blaming for JD Vance yet?

Some people think Kamala Harris’s husband’s alleged affair during his first marriage is a BFD? While they are voting for a man who cheated on all three of his wives. Make it make sense.

Been watching BBC feed on Olympics. Even the British announcers are in awe of Simone Biles.

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Sometime we see new sports on the Olympics and think “That looks like fun.”

Watching canoe slalom in Kayaks is not one of those times.

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McCovey Chronicles line sort of sums up the SF Giants offense for most of this year. “Forever Giants Brandon Belt & Darin Ruf were at Oracle Park Wed night & Belt even sat in on hitters meeting. Fired up, offense delivered four hits, and & walk. But their timing was excellent.”

(SF Giants won 1-0 behind Logan Webb shutout.)

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Another Dark Brandon win and great news ! Russia agrees to free Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan in multi-country prisoner swap.

Has even Putin decided Trump is too unstable?

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Donald Trump Jr. says people in New York City are giving him secret thumbs up signs for his father so others can’t see.

Uh, Jr, I don’t think the thumb is the finger that New Yorkers are showing you to indicate how they feel about your dad.

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What’s next on the stupid/dementia meter? Is Trump going to try to accuse Kamala Harris of deciding to become a woman?

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SNL is on hiatus until September, but some of this summer’s insanity from the mouths of people like Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Laura Loomer would be rejected in the writer’s room as too much of a stretch.

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If we’re discussing Presidential candidates’ origins, should we perhaps be questioning whether Donald Trump was born or hatched?

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For those of my friends/readers on Twitter,

If you just started following Tim Walz, Make sure you also follow 4 strong smart women from Minnesota.

@AmyKlobuchar

@TinaSmithMN

@LtGovFlanagan

@Morrison4MN

Amy and Tina are pretty well known, and both have underrated senses of humor.

But Lt. Governor, Peggy Flanagan MIGHT be moving up in the world & Kelly Morrison should win DropoutDean Phillips’ seat