caulfield12

Chances of this happening if they didn’t vote 85-90% Republican? Probably about the same level of probability as Trump doing PSA’s for the US Postal Service hyping “mail it in” voting during September and October. All the Dem governors should collectively respond...sure, we’ll open every church in the country as long as you provide waivers allowing them to sue the Trumps or Federal government instead of state/local governments if/when they invariably start to get sick now or in the fall/winter. After all, Washington, D.C., has the printing presses. They can keep cutting taxes and juice the stock and lending markets, whereas states and cities are the ones looking at massive layoffs and/or the inevitability of raising taxes.

What position is he going to play? 1B, RF, DH....yes? Or we’re basing most of our excitement on Passan/Shohei Ohtani comps? Just not seeing how he’s anything close to fitting in the Robert/Cespedes mold, but very few are... It means, and we’ve debated the value of Jose Abreu for the past three years, that he’s going to have to be an amazing hitter to bring a ton of surplus value. I also haven’t seen many scouts claiming he should or could give up pitching to be a starting pitcher like with Ohtani ever since he was in middle school. I guess part of the attraction is throwing from the LH side, but I guess we’ll find out.

All you’re missing is The Alamo soundtrack playing in the background...

Russia coronavirus chief: “Those meant to die will die. Everyone dies.” Alexander Myasnikov, previously a celebrity doctor, made the controversial comments during an interview with pro-Putin pundit Vladimir Solovyov, broadcast on Tuesday: https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/05/21/russia-coronavirus-chief-those-meant-die-will-die/

Well, Clint Eastwood got his break with that show...and needed a haircut. But can Greg also carry on a conversation with an empty chair? “Remember Pig Pen, who had a cloud of dust around him at all times?” Ann Arbor resident Joe Miriani asked The Daily Beast. “That’s what the virus is like. A mask isn’t going to stop that. (CNN) Sweden has revealed that despite adopting more relaxed measures to control coronavirus, only 7.3% of people in Stockholm had developed the antibodies needed to fight the disease by late April. The figure, which Sweden's Public Health Authority confirmed to CNN, is roughly similar to other countries that have data and well below the 70-90% needed to create "herd immunity" in a population. It comes after the country adopted a very different strategy to stop the spread of coronavirus to other countries by only imposing very light restrictions on daily life. Sweden's chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said the number was a "little lower" than expected "but not remarkably lower, maybe one or a couple of percent." https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/health/sweden-herd-immunity-coronavirus-intl/index.html

He’s Dayan Viciedo all over again unless he can really pitch effectively as a reliever...which means he’s going to have to improve greatly on his off-speed stuff, as big league hitters will just lay off of it.

Breaking: Montgomery, Alabama...shocking...starting to run out of ICU beds today/tonight. How the hell does one play tennis with gloves on during the summer...with those copper compression ones they’re constantly hawking on MSNBC? Either you’re going to lose grip on the racquet and it will fly out of your hands (cloth ones), or you’re going to accidentally wipe the sweat away from your eyes after absorbing it into the leather (plus constantly touching the ball). Every player has one ball that only they serve with? How practical is that? Otherwise, you’re going to be like Willie McGee and wiping your face with your sleeves constantly... Try batting gloves? Well, I guess still better than racquetball, handball or wall ball...

Doc “Moonlight” Graham is dead! He went to be with his Alecia in 1965, and nobody’s going to tell me different. https://twitter.com/Shawington/status/1263277013344964608?s=20 And this guy who “invented” e-mail asserts masks don’t work...because he went to MIT, has a PhD and is running for office, he must be right

The CDC is out to get revenge on Trump. Deep state! Fake news! Or the CDC has been sidelined for so long that nobody’s going to actually pay attention (Dr. Laura Mesonnier spooked the markets speaking out of turn and then the “everyone who wants a test can get one” fiasco in Atlanta) so Trump now won’t give then credit for anything, even if it leads to more confidence in reopening...because, politics. Yet he won’t fire Drs. Redfield and Azar because that would make him look even more incompetent.

Nobody really knows what the hell is going on in GA. Or TX, VT and VA. At least four states combined data from two different test results,potentially providing a misleading picture of when and where coronavirus spread as the nation eases restrictions. ..... Virginia, Texas, Georgia, and Vermont have said they've been adding two numbers to their totals: viral test results and antibody test results. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html After facing weeks of criticism for not being transparent with data about the coronavirus, state officials on Wednesday acknowledged that a test type that does not measure active cases inflated published test counts by 57,000, or roughly 14% of total tests to date. ..... “Either they don’t know what they’re doing, or (the data is) being manipulated in ways it shouldn’t,” said Dr. Harry J. Heiman, a clinical associate professor at the Georgia State University School of Public Health. “Either way it is very concerning.” In April, Gov. Brian Kemp called the state’s poor national ranking in its share of residents tested for the virus “unacceptable,” and challenged public health officials and private companies ramp up the state’s testing capacity. Earlier this week, he publicly touted the state’s rise to 20th in the nation as an important step forward. Removing antibody tests from the state’s testing total, however, now drops Georgia’s per capita ranking to 29th, according to the AJC’s analysis of national testing data. https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/latest-data-lapse-inflated-georgia-virus-test-count-000/2RG89mkuryApRMdQzblMgP/

Well, what’s wrong with 1,235,520 deaths AND counting? It’s only 13x worse than our current level. Barely twice as much as the Civil War...and it’s only 0.003766 of the US population, that’s not even 1/2 of 1%!!! That's where we would currently be following Plan Sweden. And it still gives Trump wiggle room to claim that UK “experts” (Niall Ferguson at Imperial College) originally predicted 2.2-2.4 million deaths with no social distancing. He’s saving 1+ million lives. Amazing! Nobel Prize worthy, if the MSM didn’t hate America and want to stay locked down forever to deny Trump re-election. Oregon GOP nominee Jo Rae Perkins speaks about 'Q' like he or she is a real person. 'Q is most likely military intelligence and they've been out there watching what's been going on with our country for decades and they are partnered with President Trump to stop the corruption and to save our republic.'

Civil War. Plagues of locusts. All of The Purge movies...combined. Worse than the Left Behind series. Worse than Bleeding Kansas. More dictatorial/tyrannical than Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, Mao and Pol Pot. Worse than Ditka vs. a hurricane. Worse than MJ vs. The Bad Boys combining forces with Horace Grant and Will Perdue. Worse than Phil vs. Jerry Krause. Worse than Dolan vs. NYC. Bird Box mixed with Tiger King, narrated by a hallucinogenic-inflamed Henry Rollins. 100x worse than Marshawn Lynch’s acting in Westworld S3.

At more than 5 million cases, the virus has infected more people in under six months than the annual total of severe flu cases, which the World Health Organization estimates is around 3 million to 5 million globally. The pandemic has claimed over 326,000 lives, though the true number is thought to be higher as testing is still limited and many countries do not include fatalities outside of hospitals. Over half of the total fatalities have been recorded in Europe. source: Reuters So we’re talking 456,400 - 521,600 on a global level, most realistically....and with Brazil copying the Trump Doctrine politically and temperamentally, it means South America will soon be overrun, then Central America, Mexico, and we can go back to June, 2015, and protecting from barbarian hordes invading from the south/border security as a campaign issue. Attacking the CDC, WHO, China, Obama, Joe Scarborough, Nancy Pelosi. Check. Spending $600 million on machines that were supposed to clean/disinfect masks 20 times for reuse when the actual number has turned out to be 3-4 times, making not simply procuring the masks in the first place...well, it is what it is. Check. Even at $1.50 instead of the pre-virus cost of 0.58, that would be 400,000,000 N95 masks, more than enough for every American, with 70,000,000 left over. Another $354 million contract to a Virginia company to create a national drug stockpile despite their having no experience doing so. Check. What’s a $100 billion anyway, it’s not even Bezos’ net worth, even after divorce. Navy Rear Adm. John Polowczyk is just going around telling everyone “he has a blank check from the Trump administration.” No oversight of Treasury/Mnuchin programs for medium and large companies. No oversight of Jared Kushner. No oversight with every IG who crosses Trump Saturday Night Specialed.

Would much rather have Y. Cespedes than Colas...

They’re going to have to be really careful about studying air conditioning impacts...especially centralized systems...as many are under the assumption 100 degree temps in south Texas could/should be “killing off” the disease when it’s ultimately leading to greater spread indoors. Wuhan is extremely hot and humid from late May through the first two weeks of Sept. Buses, subways, restaurants, cinemas, gyms...nobody can survive this time of the year without air conditioning. Florida, Georgia, South Carolina...heck, most of the Southeast, has that similar weather pattern in the summer months, stretching from KC/StL to Balt/DC and then everything across the south from Florida over to east Texas. We’ve already seen issues with airplanes...and there was also that well-publicized case in southern China where a restaurant fan (this was at least two months ago) spread it from 1 to 6-7 others in the same concentrated seating space.

Tedros Adhanom-Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, on Wednesday said that more cases had been reported to the agency in the last 24 hours than any time since the novel coronavirus outbreak began. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” Tedros said at a briefing in Geneva. “In the last 24 hours, there have been 106,000 cases reported to WHO – the most in a single day since the outbreak began. Almost two-thirds of these cases were reported in just four countries.” Those four countries, WHO infectious disease epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove confirmed to CNN in an email, are: the United States, Russia, Brazil and India. https://www.yahoo.com/sports/korean-soccer-team-hit-with-record-fine-over-placing-sex-dolls-in-stands-195721079.html This might be the funniest thing of the week.... $80,000+ fine? I guess all sense of humor is going out of the world, since they’re not anything close to provocative, at least compared to real life fashions in K-pop and nighttime dramas. Ozzie/Swisher-Gate...this is not.

It doesn’t help that American and United are blatantly lying about not selling middle seats. Many of the flights that are going out, people are ending up stuffed together like sardines. Only Delta seems to be following the guidelines (that are mere suggestions and not enforced, or enforceable, by TSA or FAA) of only 60% capacity in cabins, 50% in first class, no middle seats sold, no seats sold in bulkhead areas or in close proximity to flight attendant jump seats. In the beginning, they were brazenly attempting to monetize your health (fears) by encouraging passengers to pay various fees not to have someone sitting next to you (let’s say, $47 on a typical domestic flight) but that was quickly seized upon as being in terrible taste and junked. Trump on H1N1/Obama response In 2009, then-businessman Trump said, "I think it's fine. It's the flu. It's the flu," noting that mankind has had epidemics and flus before. "It's going to be handled. It's going to come. It's going to be bad. And maybe it will be worse than the normal flu seasons. And it's going to go away. I think it is being handled fine. I think the words are right." "But, you know, you're letting people in from countries that have bigger doses of it, and everybody's coming into the country, and the Mexicans aren't stopped and nobody's stopped," before immediately noting, "I'm not saying they should be stopped." "It's called the flu. Have you had the flu many times, Neil (Cavuto)? Probably. You know, we all have." https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/obama-trump-swine-flu/index.html

Athletes During the Pandemic Are Learning What Fans Have Always Known As players return to empty arenas, they are discovering a basic truth: Live sports is an act of social imagination. https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/05/bundesliga-sports-return-pandemic-athletes-fans-shared-imagination/611857/

Real dictators are never reasonable. Neither is climate change/Mother Nature...see central Michigan flooding. Good luck social distancing in shelters.

https://theathletic.com/1822361/2020/05/19/what-tyler-saladinos-kbo-experience-can-tell-us-about-pandemic-baseball/?source=dailyemail Tyler Saladino’s experiences this spring in South Korea with KBO Covid-ball, culture shock...definitely reinforced trepidation about those nasal swabs.

https://sports.yahoo.com/not-believe-mlb-claims-much-130928627.html They leave out large chunks of revenue MLB and its owners will realize. They include costs, such as spending on the amateur draft, that that have already been deferred to the future. The AP article neglects to mention that the money MLB claims it will lose due to broadcasters holding back broadcast rights money for games not played is, often, money being saved by the same businesses which own teams because a lot of teams have interests in their cable network. Sure, SNY might not be paying the Mets for some games, but every penny SNY saves is a money Fred Wilpon saves. Which is to say a great deal of what MLB is claiming as a loss can be characterized very differently depending on how one accounts for it. Which is something anyone who is familiar with the history of Major League Baseball’s economic landscape knows has long been a part of the game’s creative approach to finances.

I guess that explains Utah and Florida...being among top states for prescriptions. This was from way back in March. State pharmacy boards in Texas, Ohio, Idaho and Nevada in recent days moved to restrict who can be prescribed the malaria treatments chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, and how much of the drugs can be prescribed, according to documents filed by the boards. Texas has also limited prescriptions of the antibiotic azithromycin as well as another anti-malarial drug, mefloquine. ..... The Nevada and Ohio rules dictate that the drugs can only be used for treatment not prevention of COVID-19. Texas and Idaho said that the prescription needs a diagnosis “consistent with the evidence for its use.” https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-pharmacies/states-work-to-limit-prescriptions-of-potential-coronavirus-drugs-idUSKBN2190XC

Everyone on Morning Joe speculating that there’s pretty much no way he’s even taking it. Too desperate to change the subject from IG firings, Pompeo and super shady Saudi arms sales. Of course, the last time he did this in March, prescriptions spiked by a factor of 46x and lupus patients couldn’t get their hands on it. “I'm not only the Hydroxychloroquine Club president, but I'm also a client." Making it more amusing is his obliviousness about The Hoarse Whisperer’s ongoing mockery campaign when he retweeted this one. Trump not only ripped the host but also the entire Fox News network, claiming he was “looking for a new outlet.”

“That seems to me to be a crazy thing to do,” said David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology at the University of Toronto. “If the drug had no side effects, it would be a reasonable thing to do.” ...... Even before Trump's comments, the head of the FDA’s drug office earlier Monday expressed concern for vulnerable (lupus, my add) patients who depend on the drug. “It's a necessary drug for them and not having access would have terrible consequences," tweeted Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Trump's former secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin, expressed worry on Twitter that Trump's touting of the drug would influence the public to take hydroxychloroquine without data to support its use. Other health experts worried that patients would gravitate toward hydroxychloroquine, even as another experimental drug — Gilead's remdesivir — has shown promise in hospitalized patients. Aneesh Mehta, an infectious disease doctor at Emory University, said that some patients didn’t enroll in a trial of remdesivir he helped run because they wanted to take hydroxychloroquine after seeing media reports. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/18/trump-hydroxychlrorquine-health-experts-267066