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If there is one thing the stock market is great at, it's pricing risk.

It's a really bad time to hire a coach unless you go to NBA/overseas route.

Probably improper to speculate but McCain really did seem off, concretely. The mixup with Comey and the President, the bizarre lead of questions, very strange.

If he didn't know it was inappropriate, why did he ask everyone to leave the room?

QUOTE (ChrisLikesBaseball @ Jun 8, 2017 -> 09:54 AM) The White Sox haven't had a position player start an All Star game since Frank Thomas in 1996. We were really really good at getting that 25th man spot for a while though. Lost our mojo.

Comey stated that he took the "I hope you see it through to let this go" as a direction that he did not take. Reminder he was later fired for that.

https://twitter.com/NoahShachtman/status/872823335184420864 "Comey just strooooooongly implied the Steele Dossier contained "credible allegations."" This is one of those things that I can't figure out if Comey is willing to bend for now that he's not a sitting FBI director or is something COmey was always way too willing to do. Nice to have the info now, but seems imprudent.

"Comey: “General Flynn at that time was in legal jeopardy” and Trump asking me to back off the probe was “disturbing”" Probably as strongly worded as we will see, obstruction of justice will be a political question with a sitting president.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 8, 2017 -> 08:46 AM) It isn't going to happen overnight, and I don't think Comey's testimony will be Trump's undoing, but it will be a part. There is a lot of s*** going on. I think the guy's name is Richard Clarke, a former intel guy with 4 administrations. He was on yesterday, and they were asking him about the hookers and peeing dossier, and how the US intel could confirm it, and he went through what they would do, and at the end threw out a, from what I've been told, most of it has already been confirmed. For a guy who is willing to throw just about anyone under a bus, it is weird Trump's exceptions are Putin and Flynn. Richard Clarke has become kind of a crank, so I'd take it with a grain of salt, but clearly the investigation into the meetings has been followed.

At one point, Comey actually confirming that the memorializing was true that a sitting president was having private meetings with the FBI director to discuss a related investigation and telling him to let go an investigation into his friends was considered necessary by certain troubled GOP senators. Now we know that if that is confirmed it's just a "snooze, already know that!" Comey's introduction letter confirmed what has previously reported as well as clarifying why trumpw ould have said he was told 3 times he was not under investigation. It does not mention the other 9 meetings. Some things will rely on questions, but we don't know if Mueller shut him down from discussing those.

Cool news, thanks for sharing.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 04:35 PM) This is the most boring draft I can remember. Most teams are pretty firm on their guys. Oakland/Philli/Milwaukee could surprise but yeah, need a top five team to throw a wrench. I heard Adell possibly at #4 underslot. Take it with a grain though. Is it pretty firm Wright/Greene/Gore/McKay/Lewis in that order?

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 04:32 PM) That's disturbing. The pizza hut by my parent's house had to cops called because a women nodded off while her three young kids ran around the restaurant. This s*** I can't handle.

I think Milwaukee grabs him. This draft will be pretty crazy, would be wild if one of those tops 5 is not selected right away and what ripples could follow.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 04:15 PM) Man Naperville alone should be freaking the state out. A friend from Naperville said they call i88 Heroin Highway. There was a WBEZ report 2 years ago called heroin highway specifically around Neuqua Valley, which had just seen some obscene number like 5 or 6 overdose deaths in a class. Part of it was a mom whose daughter had overdosed looking back and realizing that she had been at the movies with her daughter and friends, and they'd sit in a separate row. Later found out they were doing heroin, basically next to her. Hard listen.

Holy crap.

I can't imagine there is a state that isn't at epidemic level when we are seeing this amount of deaths. Incredibly tragic and scary.

QUOTE (Sleepy Harold @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 03:55 PM) http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?s...mp;ymd=20170607 Looks like the DSL Sox won today, no LuBob yet. http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?g...ox&sid=milb Guerrero 1 for 4 with a double.

That is essentially validating terrorism as an appropriate tactic.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 01:56 PM) To be clear: i'm not saying Trump shouldn't be impeached. I would be all for getting rid of him. However, I think that's such a huge step in our democracy that it shouldn't be based on "ifs" or "maybes" or "this is what he meant..." It should be pretty concrete, otherwise we open the door to impeachment proceedings for every little thing. To me, his statements about Flynn are Blago-like act with the horse trading. Is it wrong? Yes. Are these sorts of things (protect your friends and put in good words for them) done all the time in politics? Perhaps i'm wrong, but I assume this is rather common practice. His more egregious act, IMO, was firing Comey, not asking Comey to be nice to his friend. But Blago is in Jail! To me, it's the fact that there was follow-up. But here was basically the line that turned the tide on Nixon (asking CIA to get FBI to stop going forward) https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DBvQ2bKW0AAY6Kw.jpg And we have rumors and I assume eventual testimony that the DNI was requested to also ask the FBI director to cut it out. FBI was supposed to be independent. Meeting alone with him and even discussing him is censure-worthy. But this is clear obstruction. Honestly to me it's more explicit than blagos.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 01:50 PM) And yes, firing Comey was the biggest, dumbest move Trump could have made. That is the big move that counters what i'm arguing. Seemingly Trump could have fired Comey simply for not being good at the PR game and pissing everyone in Washington off, but it sure comes off as Comey being fired for not "taking care" of the Russia problem for him. This part is crucial to me. You can't separate A from B He fired Comey and we know from Rosenstein he said he was going to fire him and asked for a memo for rationale Trump himself then said that the rationale given wasn't why, and that he was thinking about the Russia thing. These things don't need to be inferred, he did this. And I think he did them because he doesn't understand that the FBI director being independent means anything. He is the president, all work for him. Why should I not be able to tell him to stop investigating my friend? And just because he's obtuse doesn't mean it's dangerously wrong.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 01:48 PM) The problem is he asked Comey to take it easy on Flynn AFTER Flynn was let go and he never told Comey not to investigate his admn, he just kept complaining about the problem and wanted Comey to make it publicly known that he wasn't going to investigate Trump personally (or wasn't investigating him personally). Unless I glossed over it, I don't see Comey saying that Trump ordered him or inferred to him that he should drop all investigations. I guess if you take "lift the cloud" to mean "stop the investigation" then I see your point, but I don't think I can make that leap in light of the context of the conversation (Trump: "Dude, these people won't shut up about this and they claim I pee'd on hookers! Can't you do something about this?") I'm referring to the part where Trump cleared the room to talk about Flynn and ask that he let this thing go. Yes, he had been fired, but he was still under investigation for lying on his classification, for one thing, and his communication with Russia more broadly. "The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”" I don't understand what this means then to you.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 01:43 PM) And if it were a Clinton, the Dems would already have their list of reasons why they weren't trying to influence the AG... er, Head of FBI. I too remember when Lynch met with Bill Clinton and then fired Comey to prevent investigation into her emails.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 01:41 PM) If this had been Clinton (or Obama or any Dem), Republicans would already be holding impeachment trials in the Senate. And they would be right to.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Jun 7, 2017 -> 01:37 PM) Honestly I took it as, this doesn't really strengthen the Dems' claims and in fact in a lot of ways makes them less serious (e.g., he never told Comey not to investigate him and Trump is actually right in that Comey did confirm to him that he was not being investigated personally), yet on the other hand, it clearly shows Trumps efforts to, at a minimum, push or influence Comey in his duties (with Flynn and with the Russia probe generally). Trump was also not using the appropriate "traditions" of going through third parties to talk with Comey and instead elected to speak to him directly on a number of occasions. I'm not really sure any of this is actionable though. Inappropriate, yes, but impeachable? Ehhhh. I was hoping for something more. Perhaps in isolation, I find it hard to see your point with the knowledge that trump eventually fired Comey and told Lester Holt that he was thinking about the Russia investigation. If he was just giving Flynn a recommendation of character by dismissing all from the room and then saying to let the investigation go, I don't find it necessary to then fire the FBI director. And again, Nixon was never found to have ordered the Watergate break-in. But I don't see how you could look at this behavior and not think that Trump is demanding that federal law enforcement will not be allowed to hold his administration to account.