caulfield12

With Dems, one single, solitary flaw DOOMS their candidacies. (Exception for HRC, which shouldn't have been made, because her flaws overwhelmed her in the end.) Biden's age/plagiarism, Booker's coziness with Big Business/Big Pharma and sermonizing without backing it up, Warren's "Pocahontas" factor, it's ALL meant to distract the electorate from being forced to discuss and ponder REAL ISSUES, which might actually cause the balance to tip to the side of the Dems. Look what Trump did with his nicknames to nearly the entire Republican presidential field in 2016. We spent 50% of the campaign discussing those soap opera issues (will Cruz defend his wife's honor, is Fiorina going to fight back about her appearance being picked on by an obese/rich/white guy? is Cruz actually somehow connected to the JFK Conspiracy, etc.?) DISTRACTIONS. That's all they are...and quite deliberate ones, at that.

It would be fine if 2 or 3 of those teams were competitive, but they all sucked this year, other than the Indians...it was the worst (individual) division statistically in a LONG time. Unless you mixed all the teams together and did away with NL and AL, you'd be in a division with the Cubs/Brewers/Cards or the Astros, which would be suicidal for the White Sox rebuild.

In other words, ADD/ADHD has now become the convenient excuse for every parent whose kids are overachieving or lose focus. From a school standpoint, it's an issue dealing with all the zombie kids on Ritalin (in the US, allowing them to put their head down on the desk is considered to be abuse/neglect, even if they have a job after school and don't have enough rest)...and, of course, those who "game the system" in order to get extra time allotted for their SAT or ACT exams, for example.

You can always watch The Man in the High Castle. And Greg has a point about the "boring" factor of a 162 game schedule with most of the games started by relievers and hours' worth of pitching changes and commercial breaks. Not to mention the fall off in attendance/revenues related to the bottom 1/3rd (maybe 8-12) of teams not having a realistic chance to even make the playoffs at the beginning of the year. That's why the NBA/NHL model is something they're going to have to look at (in terms of half the teams making the playoffs)...with a 154 or even 140 or 146 game schedule. Yes, it's sacrilegious to purists and will throw off the single-season records, but they're going to have to do something eventually because attention spans are just not that long anymore for young people.

Gray is the next Contreras...or not. I’ll go with highly unlikely. (Well, probably better than being the next Loiaza, which would put him in prison for life.)

More Trump hocus-pocus, up is down, down is up...and he’s somehow actually fighting for “us” when he’s really doing exactly the opposite. Maybe those lower middle class / lacking college degree Trump voters are simply expressing admiration for how cleverly billionaires can “legally” (right up to the borderline) work the system to pay less in taxes than Warren Buffett’s secretary...?

The never-sleeping folk at the not-yet-failed New York Times on the Trump tax beat are at it again, this time with a lengthy expose on how Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, likely paid no taxes from 2009 until 2016, at least. This comes on the heels of the reporting, published less than two weeks ago, on how Fred Trump, Donald's father, engaged in aggressive tax planning with his son starting when Donald was as young as 3. It continued over decades, to avoid more than $400 million in taxes, per the Times' analysis. And those two reports followed the bombshell reporting from October 2016 -- to which Trump was responding in the tweet above -- that Trump had used losses, which we later learned came from other people's money, to avoid paying any tax on almost $1 billion in income for up to two decades. The most recent piece on Jared's non-taxpaying is once again lengthy and detailed, turning on tax-law intricacies such as depreciation deductions, the income tax treatment of debt, Section 1031 "like kind" exchanges, and more. The New York Times article leaves little doubt that Jared's tax-saving techniques were legal. Cue up the band to sing odes to Jared's genius, which is precisely what Rudy Guiliani said of Donald two years ago, after the first Times story broke: "The man is a genius, he knows how to operate the tax code for the benefit of the people he is serving." Now we know: Taxpayers helped enable Trump's fortune But the legality of Jared's tax planning is not a defense of Trump. It is a damnation of him. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/opinions/trump-kushner-taxes-paid-by-others-mccaffery/index.html

https://www.yahoo.com/news/governor-blames-trump-republicans-protest-clashes-180747923.html In a conference call with reporters, the Democratic governor called the invitation to Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes to speak at the Metropolitan Republican Club a "political tactic because what they're trying to do is fire up their base" ahead of the midterm elections. "Why would the Republican Party at their main club invite the Proud Boys?" Cuomo asked, pointing out that they have been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Proud Boys is made up of males who describe themselves as "western chauvinists." The state Republican Party called Cuomo's comments "outrageous." The Republican Club had been vandalized ahead of the speech, with officials saying the damage included smashed windows, a spray-painted door and a keypad lock covered in glue. A note left at the scene claimed that the damage was "just the beginning." In an emailed statement, spokeswoman Jessica Proud said, "It's unconscionable that when Republicans were attacked and threatened, Governor Cuomo said absolutely nothing. Violence of any kind has no place in society, yet the governor — who is charged with ensuring everyone's personal safety and property is protected — only thinks those rights should be afforded to Democrats. It's not surprising coming from the man who said conservatives have no place in the state, but it's nonetheless outrageous." Cuomo said he had directed the state police to assist the New York Police Department in a probe of the violence that took place Friday night between the Proud Boys and those protesting the speech. Three people have been arrested, but elected officials were outraged over videos posted online of the violence, saying they showed Proud Boys members were involved and should face consequences.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/maine-faces-consumer-backlash-senator-135002653.html Maine faces a targeted consumer boycott of tourism and lobster industries after Collins' vote for Kavanaugh...already $3 million raised for anyone who challenges her as well. What next, Trump will approve more bailouts/subsidies for the lobster industry, like he did with the farm lobby?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/14/opinions/dem-voting-excitement-opinion-obeidallah/index.html That's like me saying anything from the Wall Street Journal or Forbes is nonsense. If Trump is so great for their ratings, why would they want to have "skewed" polls that result in an environment where he was politically "hemmed in" (assuming the House goes DEM) by leading the country to believe a Blue Wave was coming? As a Republican, you don't believe anything CNN puts out there, right? They're only making CONSERVATIVES want to vote more with their "fake" polls, true or false? Wouldn't it be better to SCARE THE HELL OUT OF LIBERALS by creating/crafting polls that had Trump's party leading by 3-5%, causing EVERY Democrat to be motivated to get out and vote, instead of a mere 36-37% of the eligible electorate, which is more typical compared to around 55% for presidential contests?

Trump can put 4000 lies out there in 2 years and one candidate who's actually authentic or honest...lets her guard down a bit that she occasionally plays computer games to relax is all of a sudden "done" in Iowa for actually being a genuine, REAL person? Isn't that what everyone admires (supposedly) about Trump, his "calling it like it is"-ness? Isn't that why Beto O'Rourke is quickly becoming the Hispanic Obama? How many times, by the way, was Obama criticized for golfing or filling our NCAA Tourney Brackets? It's like the Dems can't take ONE wrong step, but you can be Duncan Hunter in CA and basically break election laws and STILL win? I have a feeling that Grassley or King wouldn't know anything beyond the Atari 2600, yet Iowans keep voting for them. It's nuts.

Price has yet another opportunity to wet the bed in the post-season, they somehow got him back the lead. (One pitcher we know won't be entering here is Workman, haha). Looks like Cora learned his lesson going with Eduardo Nunez at 3B, too. Big at-bat here to see if Price can leave the box score with the lead or not. We can (still) hardly say he's been worth his investment.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/moneyball-author-says-analytics-drained-baseball-emotion-121728125.html

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/14/politics/cnn-poll-trump-biden-bernie-sanders-2020/index.html Trump expected to win (barely) in 2020, Biden way ahead for Dems (33% to 13% for Sanders, Harris 3rd), Bloomberg only 4%, same as O’Rourke The fierce battle to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh hasn’t turned into an electoral advantage for Republicans so far, according to a CNN poll that found Democrats with a large lead headed into November midterm elections. In a generic ballot matchup, likely voters favored the Democratic Party’s candidate for Congress 54 percent to 41 percent over the GOP candidate, according to the poll. That’s little changed from September, when the same poll found 52 percent of voters favored Democratic candidates for Congress. Democrats have a 30-point lead with women voters, 63 percent to 33 percent, the poll found. Men favor Democrats by only about 5 points, 50 percent to 45 percent. The survey was conducted by telephone Oct. 4-7 and had a 3.8 percent margin of error.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-donald-trump-likely-win-204941807.html why Trump will likely win a second term...hint, it’s the current structure of the Electoral College The three groups that most heavily support Democratic candidates — blacks (88 percent for Clinton in 2016), Hispanics (66 percent for Clinton) and Asians (65 percent for Clinton) — now find themselves disproportionately living in densely populated states whose electoral votes are undervalued compared to those rural, less-populated states. As Graph 2 shows, in the 2016 election, Wyoming — where 84 percent of the population is white ― had one electoral vote for every 187,875 residents. California — where 62 percent of the population are minorities ― had one electoral vote for every 677,344 residents. So if a person moved from Wyoming to California, their vote would lose nearly 66 percent of its value in presidential elections. Population per Electoral Vote View photos More The Electoral College was designed to buttress the power of white rural voters, and true to that purpose, it continues to suppress the power of minority voters today. Critics may argue that Hillary Clinton lost because she failed to round up as many voters in 2016 as Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012. But Clinton didn’t so much lose the national election as she failed to win enough support in several states stacked with white voters. Clinton handily won California (62 percent minority) and New York (43.5 percent minority), barely lost Florida (42.2 percent minority), and racked up more votes in Texas (56.5 percent minority) than Obama had. Together, these four states account for 33 percent of the nation’s population and an increasingly larger percentage of the nation’s minorities. However, Clinton lost traction in Michigan (75 percent white), Pennsylvania (78 percent white), Ohio (80 percent white) and Wisconsin (82 percent white), and as a result, she lost the election. What this all adds up to is a rather unpopular but quite sound prediction: Donald Trump is likely to win a second term.

#4 is exactly why Mnuchin or Countrywide/Mozilo was never prosecuted in 2009/10. Because our country has legalized fraud, such as parking immense amounts of corporate and individual profits offshore in tax havens like the Caymans, Panama, Switzerland. Why is our Treasury currently running a trillion dollar deficit when corporate profits have never been higher? Whereas the upper middle class guy with an income of $75K who gets audited and can’t afford to fight the IRS indefinitely with an army of lawyers gets screwed. While it might not be fraud because a lobbyist or Congressperson in their pockets created a loophole big enough to get Refrigerator Perry through...it’s shady/unethical (not in the best interests of MOST Americans), representing the utter lack of morals and values that are ubiquitous across corporate America these days, and with the Kavanaugh appointment, not even ultimately challengeable through our court system. The 1% never really suffers, no matter what moral harms or hazards they bring down on everyone else. Right now, someone in the Madoff, Kushner and Manafort families are still living the life of Riley on the backs of those they’ve screwed over or cheated. When they do get caught, they settle outside of court and only 20-30% of the real victims are made whole, like those owning Kushner apartments in NYC and NJ who had their rents raised based on fraudulent information and were illegally convicted, or those who believed that Trump University could make the rich (or 85% of the people who have ever worked for Trump), too. Obama, Schumer and Frank are just as guilty as anyone of letting all those white collar criminals get off with light raps on the wrist.

The problem with this is you’re crafting an inspirational “feel good” backstory (it could as easily be Obama or Ocasio-Cortez)...but I don’t hear any new ideas. Just fighting for or protecting, rather than something new or innovative that improves lives. It’s like a rear guard action, it might be good enough for 2018 but it’s not the kind of argument that will convince people to vote for a Dem at the top of the ticket in 2020. Or let’s just call it the search for “authenticity” that Ocasio-Cortez, Connor Lamb and O’Rourke started https://www.yahoo.com/news/authenticity-now-attribute-craved-national-democrats-162902736--election.html

Maybe Americans really don’t want freedom of speech and actually prefer an authoritarian strongman making these decisions for them. With the way our country is divided now, neither side really has an advantage. Even if the MSM and Silicon Valley was controlled by the left (and there’s talk radio, Fox, Limbaugh, Breitbart, Alex Jones, Q Anon and the leaders in the majority of small and mid-sized cities as well as 90% of rural areas to disabuse one of that notion...or Peter Thiel), the fact of the matter is the Right controls the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, most governorships, state legislatures and city councils/school boards. Not enough? Citizens United, the Koch Brothers, the majority of non-tech mainstream corporations and investment banks are actually quite conservative. You write as if 1984, Brave New World or Animal Farm dystopia is right around the corner. It’s not. If anything, there’s more of a threat to the Left than to the Right, especially if the Republicans can slow down or at least curb immigration flows. This doesn’t even take into account gerrymandering, Jim Crow 2018 Version 2.0 Enhanced across the South, Native Americans being disenfranchised, State Legislatures interfering in elections, etc. (Maybe it is the end of the world. Iowa State is suddenly the best college football team in America!)

Maybe it would simply be easier to trade for one of the Dodgers 7-8 outfielders, lol. Bellinger, Taylor, Peterson, Kemp, Puig, Kiki Hernandez (if/of), Alex Verdugo or even Toles. Bellinger’s not going anywhere and Puig’s in his walk year next season, but TRY something better than forcing Palka/Delmonico/Cordell/Engel into those spots.

Well, we know MLB desperately wants to see the Dodgers/Red Sox (30 year anniversary of Gibson homer off Eck) or a rematch of last season, which would also be quite unique.

Three soft hits and a blown strike three call against Barnes. Just another example of how fortunate the 2005 White Sox were to have almost every break go their way. The margin of error against a team with as much talent as the Dodgers have is razor thin. At any rate, Jansen has almost lost the closer’s spot at this point, far from over.

And they still have the lead...Woodruff, by the way, is an excellent hitting pitcher. That was no fluke. When Kershaw’s only at 89-92, anything is possible. And can we have ONE outfielder with better overall skills than the Dodgers’ top 6-7 at that position? Too much to ask? It BETTER be Jimenez.

At least we can debate signing Moustakas again all offseason...Shaw has three more years of arbitration on his deal. (Might as well send them Yolmer or Leury to complete their bench.)

If Arcia can play like this consistently and Woodruff becomes a solid middle of the rotation guy, the Cubs are pretty much going to have to go out and add Machado or Harper because counting on Darvish right now would be a fool’s errand.

Okay, counter the 1-0 lead against one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball. The story remains that the Woodruff homer off Kershaw is going to be seen as the defining moment of the series if the Brewers go on to win it. As mentioned, they just have that unbeatable roll vibe going on right now. What will be fascinating is to see if they can maintain it while awaiting the Red Sox/Astros winner, which everyone projects to go 6-7 games. And I still believe today’s game will be tough to win as Jeffress (especially) and Knebel have been human in recent weeks.