caulfield12

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 07:11 PM) It'll be interesting to see if Biden goes for it in 2020. He was my first choice for 2016 and is probably one of the dems best candidates in some of the rust belt states. That's ultimately going to be the test for a Democratic candidate, as it was for Obama in the 2008 Dem primaries. Who can go into West Virginia, Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, southern Ohio and Indiana and win over those voters? It's impossible for me to imagine Gillibrand, Harris, Booker, etc., doing that. Sanders has the economic message, but he's still seen as a Northeasterner and has had his own difficulties appealing to African-American and Hispanic voters, partly because of the perception that the Bernie Bros movement is limited to college/high school students and White Millennials. (Fwiw, Sanders has attracted a lot of 50+ Dems who were turned off by the Clintons/Obamas and previously supported Howard Dean). Biden's problem is that he will be 77 during the run-up to the 2020 election, and turn 78 not long afterwards. That's REALLY pushing it, in terms of age, and after what happened at the end of the Reagan years, as well as what is likely to occur at the end with Trump in his early 70's. They spoke out against immigrants. So she unearthed their own immigrant ancestors Scavino’s, Steve King’s and Tomi Lahren’s Family immigration stories unearthed https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/24/us/immigrati...trnd/index.html

Iwakuma, Uehara, Kuroda and Nomo are the top 5 Japanese pitchers, arguably. Along with Yu Darvish. One's a reliever. Iwakuma has been hurt the last couple of years. Kuroda might be the best argument, but he was far from a pure fireballer. As Fathom said, it's not a lengthy list of guys who have gone even 5-7 years without a major injury, let alone 10+

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 07:13 PM) Probably not. But what I want to see is either hey we are cutting X so we can cut your taxes. Or we're going to spend more on X so we are going to raise your taxes. How much support might a border wall get if it was going to raise your taxes? How about jumping into a war with North Korea that will cost you an extra $500 a year? You want to offer junior college to the masses? It will cost every an extra $300 a year. My concern is we have lost all connection between income and expenses. We claim that we are going to be bringing in more money into the treasury after the cuts. OK, who is writing the bigger checks for more money to come in? A lot of it, theoretically, should be from repatriated taxes (think corporations like Apple) and capital gains taxes, as long as the super hot stock market continues. But yeah, you're right. They also should have explained how much each additional American would have to pay to make up for the estate tax "giveaway," for example. A lot of economists have argued we should have some type of quantifiable matrix for any government policy in terms of measuring impacts on worker training/efficiency/productivity. How much improvements in worker output were leading to increased wages, versus how much was going to shareholders and the top executives? One estimate says that only 10% of the tax law benefits are going to trickle down to the lowest rungs of the ladder. Another had it at 20%, so even if you took the average of 15%, the bottom 60% of taxpayers receiving such a small amount compared to the Top 40% receiving 85% would seem to be a consequence that voters primarily concerned with pocketbook issues would have to consider when voting. Another huge issue is convincing retired people (concerned more with cuts in SS and Medicare) that they should "invest" in young people, training, vocational school, reduced or free tuition for community college, etc. There's always a generational conflict in terms of the allocation of resources.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 06:58 PM) I would demand to know what they were cutting. I believe if there is a raise or lowering of taxes there should be an accompanying list of spending cuts/additional programs or costs incurred. Would you also take the position of approving 3-5% cuts in Medicare and Social Security? That's the one area politicians have been afraid to deal with for decades...on both sides of the fence. With defense spending increasing at least 10%, if not more...there's only so much room to cut discretionary funding without having huge impacts in terms of creating even larger state deficits in places like KS, CA or IL.

The problem now is that if the Dems take the border wall funding off the table, then Trump and especially the GOP House has more political cover for not voting after the Senate passes something. Or, at the very least, the House version is going to have a ton of over the top border security provisions and the Senate will be a much softer version that has to be reconciled.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/politics/202...frey/index.html Biden and Sanders polling better against Trump than Oprah

Scalise: No guarantee House GOP will consider Senate immigration bill https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/politics/hou...tion/index.html There you have it...it will be the Senate and the overwhelming majority of American people vs. the House. Trump will finally have to make a tough decision. Does he give the House political cover or consign himself to the dustbin of history? Trump takes immigration cues from 'Pres. Stephen Miller' https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/opinions/imm...gala/index.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/super-bowl-t...-112930425.html Super Bowl ticket prices plummeting

QUOTE (Sox-35th @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 02:38 PM) I hope he makes it to the Bulls. I would love that in Chicago. Trae Young or LaVine playing D?

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 06:47 AM) Creating policy with guns to people's heads is a dangerous path. I'd support a constitutional amendment to make it illegal. I don't see a legal way however, to make that possible, https://smucker.house.gov/media/press-relea...nment-shutdowns There are lots of similar ideas out there. On the Republican side, they (typically) want to automatically chop 1, 2 or even 5% across the board if a full year budget can’t be reached. Of course, that wouldn’t affect military spending, only discretionary spending areas. You do realize the last two major shutdowns were GOP-led?

Quite the imagination for a franchise that would be in even more ignominious territory were it not for the Mariners and Padres. Let's focus on just getting back to the playoffs, first. And it's still difficult to be overconfident without knowing anything about how Carlos Rodon will emerge from all his injuries.

Maybe they were too mesmerized by Jessica Chastain after her performance in Molly's Game...?

The Dems might as well run this ad, lol...it would probably attract more Trump supporters away from him than Sanders, Pelosi, Booker, Harris and Gillibrand will draw from railing against the GOP. Some Democrats voiced particularly strong dissent after news of the senators' deal. Alida Garcia, a strategist and advocate for immigrants' rights at the lobbying group FWD.us, announced she would cut ties with the party. "I'm leaving the Democratic Party today," Garcia tweeted. She later called Democrats "liars." "They're complicit w/ every single young person living in fear," she said. "Every pain Latino & immigrant families feel from here out is 100% due to @TheDemocrats not fully embracing us as American. Implicit racism is equally as harmful. I'm done." http://www.businessinsider.com/democrats-a...vernment-2018-1

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 04:50 PM) Ok, so one part of this does make some sense to me. Now that we're getting to the end of January with a market full of FAs who can legitimately make teams better, I was thinking that some of the teams that were close last year, maybe WC challenging teams, could come in and say "one player could legitimately put us in the playoffs now" and make a run at some of these guys. This still is not the case for the White Sox, but my mind went to teams like Arizona and Colorado, the NL wild card teams last year - they could legitimately think that one player could be the difference between a playoff appearance for them and a playoff miss. Once these guys stay out on the market long enough, teams like those will go ahead and make that one move. The Brewers were one I didn't think of, but they fit in this boat also. It's complicated for them because several of the guys remaining are outfielders and the OF is where they're already strong, hence the crazy concepts here. It makes sense that the Brewers are a team pondering how to take advantage of where this market currently is. On the other hand, everyone's sitting there watching how patient the Yankees and Astros were last season, with the Robertson/Frazier/Kahnle deal and Verlander move putting both those teams in much more competitive positions without having to overpay in the offseason (not to mention the cost savings of 3-4 months in terms of the budget). Those more or less 8-12 teams in the middle are going to all be looking for a way to exploit the current market in whatever way they can. To the Brewers, the Cubs look a bit vulnerable in the pitching department. AZ and Colorado are both interesting cases, where they might lose Blackmon after next year, so they have to make a move in 2018. With AZ, they had arguably the most screwed up front office in MLB (Stewart/LaRussa) and a couple of atrocious trades, but they're still right there on the cusp because of how good Goldschmidt and their pitching staff were last year (the big question is whether Ray, Godley, Walker and Corbin can repeat). On the plus side, the White Sox probably have more financial flexibility than any team in the majors. Shields is their only "bad" contract still on the books, and that's only temporary.

Well, the 2016 draft got raves. That's without even taking Burdi into consideration now due to his injury. Last year, not so much. Of course, bringing in Robert was like having an additional Top 4-5 pick in the first round.

Congrats to tOSU for turning their Program around so quickly after it got stagnant. No such hope with the talent level on Iowa. The worst part is the McCaffrey Brothers’ presence Is scaring off the talent we need to recruit at guard. We had to tolerate Lickliter’s son, thankfully we missed Alford’s, but he actually exceeded expectations slightly as a college player at UCLA. Finally: OU desperately needs a win at home against KU tomorrow night to right the ship. This bb team is just like the football version, star-heavy but lacking defensive shutdown ability. They could lose in the first round or get to the Elite 8 based on Young’s shooting and turnover numbers.

Is Tatis, Jr., #1? In all seriousness, it will be fun to watch Law squirming when Robert becomes a stud and he has to account for why he wasn’t even listed as a Top 100 prospect.

Democrats need to admit Trump is boosting the economy https://finance.yahoo.com/news/democrats-ne...-202039049.html

QUOTE (brett05 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 03:35 PM) Not saying you per se, but this has nothing to do with race no matter how much folks want it to be If they were illegal Melanias (nobody knows exactly how she was able to stay) and Ivanas from Slovenia and the Czech Republic, then we wouldn’t have ever heard about this issue. Or the Swedish/Finnish Bikini Team. Speaking with Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) on Monday morning at the gym, Schumer sought to find out what kind of immigration bill McConnell would agree to take up. Alexander told Schumer that he may be majority leader one day, and it would be best for him not to set the precedent of the minority dictating the legislative calendar to the majority, two Republican sources said. A bipartisan group of senators that began meeting late last week provided the cover that both Schumer and McConnell needed. That group of more than 20 senators convened in the office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday hoping to drive a solution to the shutdown. And though Schumer discussed the outlines of those talks with liberal senators who opposed them, he also quietly blessed the bipartisan working group. Schumer "was encouraging us to try to keep the discussions going so that we could get a resolution,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with the Democrats. By the time progressives met Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday night, they knew their position was eroding, said a Democratic staffer with knowledge of the meeting. politico.com

The key political question is how far does the GOP go in overplaying their hand now...? 84-87% of Americans at least want the DACA kids to be protected, if not legalized (voting rights will be another contentious issue). They just didn’t like it being paired with budget issues/govnt shutdown. The fact remains that how this is perceived in the eyes of the 30-40% of Americans in the political middle is what matters most. Trump wins whenever the discussion is about identical politics and allowing whites to feel aggrieved. That’s just a fact. The Dems need to focus on middle/working class dinner table issues and peel off those Trump voters who feel he’s just gone too far.

In the final analysis, the ten Trump State Dems up for re-election considered their own careers more important than assurance of protecting the DACA kids. We’ll see if any of them get primaried on the left. Probably not.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/politics/mcc...ysis/index.html Winners and Losers of the shutdown...include the liberal wing and 2020 Presidential hopefuls. The thing is that the GOP has their own optics problem coming up. If Trump and Ryan want to send all those kids/teenagers/young adults out of the country in handcuffs, it will be another version of Bull Connor, police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham on the national news in the 1960s. Story after story about individual lives and families affected, just like the ObamaCare/Tea Party revolt in 2010. Think prison holding camps similar to a World War Two for the Japanese. When Trump starts to get hammered for being cruel and mean, he won’t be able to resist the idea of saving the day and making a last minute deal to screw over the House GOP. If mass deportations do happen, those images of kids under ten being ripped from their parents will be the image of the fall campaign. And Trump wil never get his wall then. Even if Mexico agrees to pay for it. 1/4th of the country will love it, the other 3/4ths absolutely horrified, including the majority of American mothers. Then you can add 1.6 million El Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans. Haitians. Nigerians. Plus another 2-4 million that were part of the Dream “Chain Migration” Act. You’re talking 5-6 million people, more or less. Good luck with that one.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 01:11 PM) Here's an easy way: come here legally on some sort of Visa and just overstay! That's a significant percentage of undocumented people. If you're smuggling drugs, do it through shipping or by sea. Hand carried across the border is a tiny fraction. Don’t forget the sea turtles smuggling cocaine. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/20...scued-us-coast/ The Colombians often used miniature submarines.

Would be nice if FB shared similar data: “Nearly 700,000 American Twitter accounts followed Russian propaganda accounts or liked or favorited posts from the accounts, according to new data released by the social media platform on Friday. The new data significantly increase the latest estimate of the number of Americans who consumed content produced by Kremlin operatives during the Russian campaign to meddle in the 2016 election.”

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 08:47 AM) Dick I never mentioned anything about the people of these countries, not sure where you got that from my post. Merely saying that if all the countries were ranked, some countries have to be at the bottom. And if North Korea isn’t a s***hole, then what is a s***hole? I’m only arguing the accuracy of the term s***hole. Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Poland, Italy...most of Eastern Europe, a century ago, right? Any country with Roma or gypsies, like Romania, Hungary or the Czech Republic.