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QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 11:29 AM) Sure, they try to spin bad results, every company does that. But "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is vastly different from "smoking is completely healthy! Light em up, including you, young Johnny! That's a good boy!" "Try to spin bad results" They literally lobby tooth and nail to not allow bad results to exist. We have to rely exclusively on private groups to fund gun studies, and the data for those studies is very thin, due to rules lobbied and kept for decades by the NRA.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 11:26 AM) And as I said to Balta yesterday, the risk is patently obvious - death. Guns are dangerous tools. Guns kill. It's a zero sum game. If you have a gun in your home, there is a risk. You don't need a study to tell you that. Rates matter. AT some point something may pose such a higher risk you choose differently. We don't have great data for those risk rates for the last 20 years.

So anyway I buy that tobacco and guns are different, I don't think the lying about effects is that different as I do think they as an industry have tried extremely hard to prevent any try research on how to prevent gun violence.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 10:25 AM) Besides this kid from Finland (who is supposed to be pretty darn good), their top targets list is already gone. They have some time and of course the spring to find late bloomers, but there's good reason to be concerned right now. I will say, I am super excited to see the Martin vs Underwood results over the next 4 years. It's going to be a really interesting case study. Yeah not saying you have people right where you want em, but I do think there is going to be some weird movement that UofI has good appeal to capitalize on due to system/playing time.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 11:19 AM) Sport? Hunting? Your general point that attitudes change with regard to American traditions is well taken, but comparing guns and tobacco doesn't really work. Tobacco fell out of favor because it was (1) harming/killing a large number of people (far more than guns) and (2) the tobacco companies lied for decades about the harmful effects. I'm not aware of any gun manufacturer claiming that their guns are perfectly safe tools that don't harm people or don't have the potential to harm people. They have basically bought and paid for politicians to not allow the CDC to communicate these effects (via risk rates) including not allowing them to tell parents what additional risk a firearm in the home may cause.

We've seen a team skip starts - still september slide we've seen him pitch to contact - still september slide we've seen him skip spring training - still september slide His way of pitching has not led to injury like many predicted but maybe this is the weakness of it. I still think it's bogus and he'll end up dominating a postseason and it won't matter. But, Frank Thomas most of my childhood had that label. Postseason choker. I just think it's dumb. Celebrate the guys that have heroic moments but don't act like its an actual end all be all thing.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 10:18 AM) It's been a rough recruiting season for the staff, if they get Ayo a lot of the of pain goes away but at this point I don't think the confidence the insiders have on this one is as solid as once thought. I think Ayo wants to be the man but not the only guy in the class. Long way to go, and depending on what happens may be quite a few transfers that open up. So many guys that are "committed" now are going to open up again before they sign.

QUOTE (Wanne @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 09:51 AM) Actually I find CNN to be the biggest joke out of all of them. And I've already said earlier in this thread they all lack...but CNN has proven to be completely untrustworthy...but they fit the liberal narrative. Of course that's my opinion... Obamacare?!? BWAHAHAAAA...sorry...still find it probably one of the more disastrous things to happen in the past 10 years...but that's for another thread. But what do I know...I'm one of those self employed people that got Hitlered with a dry pineapple...that had his nice PPO plan skyrocket to them wanting almost $1000/mo (980) with a $10K deductible JUST FOR ME...a perfectly healthy male with no prexistings. I'm in AZ were everyone bailed...and not eligible for any subsidies. Yeah...thanks Barry!!! I plenty of people/families that got reamed just as bad. I guy I contract with...they wanted $1600 to cover his family. I said no thanks and bought a catastrophic plan from Golden Rule. Yeah...sorry if I don't jump up and down saying what a great thing Barrycare is. pffffffft...... Your last comment goes both ways. How many bills were presented to that pimple Harry Reid that died sitting on his desk that he refused to even bring to a vote? 400?....500? People always seem to ignore things like that. Hate to tell ya...it's both parties...that's the problem. The each serve their own interests. That fallacy that "Democrats work hard for the little people" is laughable.... You can make the argument that Dems didn't do anything when they had house/sen/exec, or you can make the argument that they did bad things, but you can't really argue both.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 09:48 AM) Sale sucks. He's a psycho bad guy bad teammate with no balls who can't win big games. And Hahn should be fired for not getting more for him. What happens if Sale is unhittable next start? I do think the Sale as a bad actor thing is old. Yeah he ridiculously cut up some jerseys, but I've never read anything where any teammate ever had a problem with him. Quite the opposite. And if Sale is a bad guy, why would anyone like Kopech? He was suspended 50 games for PEDs and broke his hand fighting a teammate. I don't think it really matters if a teammate had a problem with him, he was annoying to fans for good reason. Like him breaking his foot "jumping off a truck". When Kopech actually is, you know, at the show and he misses games for doing that, I'm sure people will be annoyed then too. I think this thread is dumb, but so is the "you can't hate sale unless you also hated everyone ever that also did things!"

Probably but hanson stayed largely due to being able to play all 3 OF position. It made it easier to keep him since he I think played all positions except 1b/C at least once.

I'm rooting for jake peter because he's kept producing, but last offseason I thought Peter was our preferred upcoming utility man. Out of spring training they sent him to AA after being in AAA the year before. He hit his way out and was smoking AAA...they didn't call him up in Sept. SS2k5 is right, there is something there the sox aren't that interested in.

I think this will almost certainly get revised to positive, and also some good news in that the employment rate when accounting for demographic changes is back to pre recession levels. The "structural unemployment" people were incredibly wrong and caused a lot of damage.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 08:35 AM) Buzzfeed has a big article on the rise of the white supremacist alt-right via Breitbart. Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals the truth about Steve Bannon’s alt-right “killing machine.” Lots of emails documenting their strategies, how they were fed information by various media and silicon valley sources, and how they embraced the racism and nationalism undergirding the movement. This is just the setup for the article as it goes into a much more detailed and documented timeline. Really helps to understand where this movement came from, how they gained influence and what impact they've had on American politics. I remember Buehrle>Wood claiming that the alt right had nothing to do with Spencer or the white nationalists, and when I pointed out the Milo piece that starts off this article (which featured Milo saying that a Spencer publication was one of their essential readings), he said it may have been but it wasn't part of the movement. And it turns out much of that article was written by the guy behind stormfront and organizing the Charlottesville rally. But this could not be a better summary: "“Please don’t forward chains like that showing the sausage being made,” Yiannopoulos wrote back. “Everyone knows; but they don’t have to be reminded every time.” By Yiannopoulos’s own admission, maintaining a sufficiently believable distance from overt racists and white nationalists was crucial to the machine he had helped Bannon build. As his profile rose, he attracted hordes of blazingly racist social media followers — the kind of people who harassed the black Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones so severely on Twitter that the platform banned Yiannopoulos for encouraging them. “Protip on handling the endless tide of 1488 scum,” Curtis Yarvin, the neoreactionary thinker, wrote to Yiannopoulos in November 2015. (“1488” is a ubiquitous white supremacist slogan; “88” stands for “Heil Hitler.”) “Deal with them the way some perfectly tailored high-communist NYT reporter handles a herd of greasy anarchist hippies. Patronizing contempt. Your heart is in the right place, young lady, now get a shower and shave those pits. The liberal doesn’t purge the communist because he hates communism, he purges the communist because the communist is a public embarrassment to him. … It’s not that he sees enemies to the left, just that he sees losers to the left, and losers rub off.”"

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 6, 2017 -> 08:23 AM) Neither Basabe or Diaz is dead yet either. Basabe will be young for A+ ball even if he repeats it. Diaz had an injury filled year, but has the arm to move fast as reliever through the system. Right. And man, considering the curvy road some of the prospects that came up this year and contributed, we're writing off a 21 year old? Basabe started to turn around and then got injured. His power, however, was sapped this year. He's not a fringe top 100 guy like we were dreaming last year, he is still raw. And that raw can still go a lotta ways, but can still very much go in very good directions. He has the pieces.

I have a dumb question possibly because it depends how we view Ben Cherington's role as VP Baseball Ops, but considering the Red Sox scandal and IMO the relatively minor punishment, I wonder if a big part of the "punishment" here will also just be people like Coppy and Cherington out of the GM/LatAm roles as punishment? Granted, it wasn't actually a demotion for Cherington in Toronto but he has someone above him and a GM below ... I don't know I"m less convinced as I write it out.

Severino, Greinke, Gray were also pretty bad. Postseason is strange sometimes.

QUOTE (DirtySox @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 06:47 PM) So much eye-roll. Same. No need to tear a player down. He didn’t leave the Sox, he was traded.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 02:18 PM) Yeah, they will probably just keep demanding the out clauses. Yeah I think this is the compromise.

He could easily turn this into a good performance still.

And why, again, would north korea be open to diplomacy, when a country that is in compliance is then deemed to not be in compliance just because the next admin didn't like the deal?

I basically hope that he says we are withdrawing in name only.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 01:53 PM) I wonder if that will make players gamble on themselves more and pass up some of these long, long term deals 6-7 years +? I would be surprised. Human brain values preventing loss more than increasing gain.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 11:34 AM) The ATF is the board currently. They evaluate products all the time. It's already illegal to modify your rifle into a fully automatic rifle. You can make your semi-auto into a "nearly" fully auto using either these bump fire stocks which are currently okay'd by the ATF or just by holding onto your belt loop as it fires (this exploits the same recoil physics that makes the bump stock work). And while modifying a semi into an actual fully automatic weapon is very, very illegal, it's trivially easy to do so. The only way to change that would be to ban semi-automatic weapons. That last sentence is what I'm talking about though. Is when these have attempted to have been defined in law (ban semi-automatics), the execution has been semantic. Automatic/semi-automatic, the actual spirit is to try and decrease the rate and amount of bullets that one gun can shoot at once. That's the legislative purpose that's lost. The committee would need to have the authority to shoot for dual-purpose ensuring guns are "safe" to owners and work for sport while not being "excessively" lethal. That's just spitballing it, but it needs to move beyond a technical gun type.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 11:13 AM) Something has to be done, a compromise needs to be made somewhere. People shouldn’t be able to easily modify their guns to become an automatic weapon as easy as he did. If you are stocking up on ammo, someone somewhere should ask “why is this happening? Why does he need this?” When I read this paragraph what sticks with me is an ongoing regulatory board for guns needs to be created. If they make a 94 style law, there will be workarounds and a lot of hearty "they said they banned assault rifles but ...". If the goal is to actually reduce these arsenals, we need a group that does that on an ongoing process, similar to FDA. And the FDA is not perfect. And it is frustrating. And it makes incorrect decisions, and it is influenced by industry and often not as much by suffering patients. BUt, it's a reasonable set-up that I'm sure has led to vastly better results than if that industry was unregulated.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Oct 5, 2017 -> 11:19 AM) Is there any place in the world where firearms are totally banned? Within at least a semi-free society. The point is to reduce the amount of situations where a gun is available. Just like, in the sentence preceding yours, no, we will not be able to insert an intervention into all violent scenarios, but we could insert them where we can and REDUCE VIOLENCE. If the situations where guns were involved was reduced, lethality would reduce, but here's the important thing: maybe not all violence. No, I do not think all gun murders being eliminated is a likely goal. But reducing them is a very worthy goal, something that should be sought after and tweaked and revised toward the best solutions daily.