caulfield12

I don’t even think the majority of non African Americans understand Kwanza as a cultural celebration and not religious holiday in any way threatening to their Christian beliefs or that it’s NOT some type of BLM outreach/recruiting program where whites are disallowed. So Greg as a black man would disabuse some of those notions.

The White Sox try to never be on the wrong side of those pitching contracts...and the lessons of the Danks and Contreras deals probably stick with them as well. $100-150 million invested in an Arrieta, that might even take the White Sox out of the running for one of the big names next year, or they'd have to go for the "fall back" options like a Josh Donaldson (compared to Machado/Arenado), which have typically blown up in their faces ala Dunn/LaRoche/Rios/Cabrera (veterans in their early 30's).

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/26/news/econo...ains/index.html Those first 3-4 paragraphs are a pretty compelling argument why tax cuts aren’t going to be a great boost to consumer spending...most of the growth will take place on the corporate profitability side of the ledger. Don’t see how that’s going to increase job/wage growth, since productivity and salary gains have been decoupled since the early 1980’s.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/2017-tug-tribali...-100004695.html 2017, the year of political tribalism Interesting article about the polarization and zero sum game nature of politics under Obama and Trump.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 26, 2017 -> 12:35 AM) I dream of America where you could (I won't; like I said I'm trained well and will never go there again) say "Merry Christmas" and the other person could laugh politely and say "Thank you," back to you, then quickly say in an equally friendly tone, "I actually am Jewish and celebrate Hannukah." And then I smile and say well I certainly wish you a happy Hannukah and we both feel good and go on our merry ways. Or vice versa and a person who is Jewish says Happy Hannukah to me and i say, "Thank you, but I celebrate Christmas" and we both smile and chat and go on our merry ways. Instead, I can only imagine the backlash in saying Merry Christmas to somebody who is an atheist or another religion that does not recognize Christmas or Happy Hannukah to somebody who does not celebrate Hannukah. Do you realize how PC the world is? Like I said, Midway Airport today was full of raging angry people who just wanted an excuse to scrap with somebody. there was no holiday spirit in the air, just anger. Trump is the first person to take this on by the horns and tell people to say Merry Christmas. By the way, I'm all for ending Christmas as a gift giving extravaganza. Christmas has little to no religious meaning in the secular world anymore. You can't imagine the spoiled kids I saw this Christmas accepting gift after gift, NFL and NHL jersey after jersey and I yes saw some signs of brattiness of the kids wanting more more more. It's become a ridiculous gift giving extravaganza (I know gifts have been given for years but I feel like part of being a truly entitle Millenial was being showered with so many gifts year after year. I feel each kid in a family should be given one gift in terms of a fun game or toy and some clothes and the family unit take part in a volunteer project instead, then if they are Christian, go to church and worship the true meaning of the holiday. Yes I can say the highlight of Christmas for me was church, the music and the excellent homily from the pastor. I'm sick of the gifts and spoiling the kids year after year with gift after gift. How bout change the culture. Yeah right. Chrstmas is 85 percent gift giving/hoarding and 15 percent religious (taking into consideration the amount of people who believe at all and if they believe the fact they do something about it on Xmas Day). Do any of you agree with me at the gluttony and monstrocity of a gift giving holiday it has become now that more and more people do not believe and/or practice faith?? But it’s great for GDP growth! In all seriousness, have you even read once online of someone actually being attacked for saying Merry Christmas to another person? Honestly, I have never even thought about it. And if I did, I think I would be more annoyed that people were ostentatiously going out of their way to wish a Merry Christmas to the point where I would probably identify the majority as overbearing Trump voters. So I’d probably just say Happy Festivus or Happy FBI/J Edgar Hoover Celebration Day back if they were too obvious in their political zeal. The volunteer thing is fine, as long as you (meaning the country) doesn’t force everyone to participate. (As an aside, you should watch Captain Fantastic and see how the father in that movie deals with the Christmas issue, and the polarizing effect on his kids). Here in China, 95% celebrate by buying discounted goods online or going out to eat without having a clue about the meaning of the actual holiday.

Yes, keep in mind, Ivanka converted to Judaism when she married Kushner, that's part of the reason for Trump's historical position. Think about the famous song "Happy Holidays" or how many people wish that to each other...it's NOT because they're afraid to say "Merry Christmas!" it's because Christmas and New Year's are one week apart, so they're just lumped in together so you don't have to make two greetings about each specific holiday. Of course, after Christmas, everyone says "Happy New Year/'s" and not "Happy Holidays," right??? I think if you heard a majority of people saying "Happy Holidays" after X-Mas, you'd have a point. And then this whole thing about Starbucks having "neutral" holidays cups so as to respect all religious traditions and beliefs...well, separation of church and state is an integral belief of the Founding Fathers, is it not?

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 25, 2017 -> 06:50 PM) I also would like to thank Trump for bringing back Christmas. Say what you want, but I've noticed it this year. Now that Trump said it's OK, Southwest Airlines, store employees, etc., Starbucks have been saying Merry Christmas to me. I've noticed cause I now get to say it back and I like it. I will say for some reason at Midway today people were in s***ty moods. I got yelled at for getting tripped while getting into space No. 31 in the A group on SW and nicked somebody's boot and said, "Sorry." She was furious that I nicked her and she was in space 31 instead of her 35 which I didn't say anything of course as I don't care bout that. Then somebody at the Avis rental place yelled "I was here first!" and I wasn't even trying to go ahead of them. I'm a little puzzled at the Scrooge like behavior today. But anyway, there was a war on Christmas. I haven't said Merry Christmas to a stranger in years til this Christmas since it's now OK to do so. Don't discount the P.C. in America. It's very very bad and this is one thing Trump did that was OK. In the end, the main thing that matters to people is whether their economic situation is improving or deteriorating. Everything else is just window dressing. We can post links to videos of Obama saying "Merry Christmas" (I think there are like 37 of them)...but the Fox News/Limbaugh view on this will prevail for those who want to perceive things through that "culture wars" prism. I'm sure Starbucks hasn't changed a single official company policy since Trump was elected. As far as the misery of air travel these days, that's just par for the course. I travel quite frequently and it has seemingly gotten worse and worse every year the last decade, and I'm lucky enough not to have to deal with US domestic airlines like Spirit, Frontier, United, Delta, US Air, etc., very often.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 25, 2017 -> 03:43 PM) I see what you are doing here, trying to get Trout on the cheap so to speak. You are not putting Eloy in there and you are putting in some guys who "could" conceivably bust soon (Avi, Rodon, Cease, Rutherford, Collins, Burdi), in effect shortchanging the Angels. This is also ridiculous. Our scouts must love these guys so again, giving up on the rebuild for one player is ridiculous. Some of you slay me. Either do the rebuild or don't. Why would you trade so many guys for one player? If you want one star, why did we get rid of Sale, Q? Now that we're doing the rebuild, do the rebuild, don't trade away all these top prospects. Angels would snicker at this particular offer cause it's obvious you're trying to slip Avi, Rutherford, Collins and Burdi in the deal who all could be major busts while throwing them a bone in Robert as Cease also could bust. My package for Trout, who is only under contract thru 2020, which would mean you'd lose him pretty soon anyway: Abreu (whom I love), Cease and Tim Anderson (this would require us drafting a shortstop this year and acquiring an acceptable but not high dollar free agent if we reach contention and need a ss with Timmy gone. I think the Sox could survive my trade and keep the rebuild on track. I was gonna throw Burger in there. I guess I could add him if we keep Davidson around. I might have been exaggerating on the high side, but that's certainly a starting point "ask" on their point...we're not going to get away with the lesser package here that you're responding to. Trading Rodon at this point in his injury rehab makes little sense, as well. Abreu/Avi aren't critical to the competing Sox teams unless we sign them to extensions, Fulmer's a throw-in with "potential" (still)...but you're right, those first three players are the core of the rebuild, and not including them would force us to include a good number from our second tier prospects to compensate for that. With the way the Angels are currently constructed (win now), it doesn't make ANY sense to trade Trout unless they were having financial problems as a franchise, which is highly unlikely under Moreno.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/tv-ad-thanks-tru...-203029715.html New tv ad thanks Trump for bringing back Christmas http://www.ajc.com/news/pennsylvania-homeo...Rt8b2R9yMuCcwM/ Jesus sign offends homeowners association and one person in PA, surely will be tweeted about soon https://www.yahoo.com/news/t-announces-thou...-205347737.html AT&T announces thousands of Christmas layoffs days after $1000 bonus PR move to influence pending merger

Moncada/Jimenez/Kopech (pick 2/3) plus Avi plus Abreu plus Fulmer

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-reacts-rep...--politics.html Trump goes on crazy rant against FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe

Might as well link us to Chris Archer, too....why not?

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/view/articles...an-nuclear-deal https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/...-investigation/ The typical NY Post and The Daily Caller don’t count on Hezbollah/Iran. And if the best the GOP can do in 2018 and 2020 is attacking Obama and the Clintons, they’re in worse trouble than many thought. For Trump’s sake, he better hope to avoid a recession in the next ten months and also that the health care market won't deteriorate so quickly and thoroughly that any benefits from the tax cuts in 2019 (along with decreased paycheck withholding) are already forgotten.

Someone wants to have Lewandowski nowhere near the Trump re-election campaign (lots of people hot about him trying to run a WH meeting on 2018/20). Or to damage him for a possible Congressional run in FL. https://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view...amp;fr2=piv-web http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/...ump-singer.html https://joyvilla.com/testingthewaters I can just see it now...women who dress like this in public are starved for attention and deserve to be harassed will be the line of conservative attack. I guess the right wing equivalent of ObamaGirl. The weird part of this is her being so pro-Trump and always wearing MAGA outfits in public...and pondering a Congressional run of her own.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 23, 2017 -> 10:35 AM) How the people came about their income is not an aspect of how they are taxed. This is a separate issue and a complex one. They way people make the most money is to invest or start businesses. You obviously need money to do these. So the system is set up for that people with money can make the most. This is more of the issue. How do you get capital available for people to do these things. But you also need the desire to to do it. I personally have had many opportunities to manage or start businesses in the physical therapy field. However, I've always just wanted to treat patients and be there for my family whenever I wanted to. A guy who wanted me to start a business with him in the 80's sold Athletico for 400 million a year or 2 ago. Think where I would be if I did work with him. So is it fair? Probably not. But i don't think the answer is to tax that group so the 1% group pays even more for everyone else because they already pay most of everything. So then why not just give every American household $12,000 back? Wouldn’t that be fairer? It would cost exactly the same as this tax cut. Wouldn’t that at least give all those in the middle class more of an opportunity to pay down debt, invest in education or start a small business? All studies would back up empirically that the middle class and poor are much more likely to inject cash directly back into the economy. They could have repaired every deficient bridge in America, for example. Continued to stabilize the health care market instead of allowing those costs to pass down to everyone who was old or sick (the expected 10% increased will negate most or all of the tax cut benefits for the majority of Americans). Treated the opioid crisis. All of these would have led to greater than 0.8% GDP growth over the next decade. Scholarships for junior colleges. Research money for AI, AR and VR, as well as alternative energy vehicles. They chose instead to go with their corporate overlords...who have spent $1.63 billion on lobbying so far this year.

1. Who was the old man at the beginning of TFA? How did he have a map to Luke? 2. Why was there a map to Luke? Who made it? Doesn't its existence mean Luke wanted to be found? 3. How does Rey know how to fly a spaceship like the Falcon better than professionally-trained Stormtrooper pilots? 4. Wasn't it too coincidental that Han was flying in the very orbit of the planet where the Falcon was being kept? Was he in fact keeping an eye on Rey from afar? Why would he ask a stranger to be his co-pilot after just meeting her? 5. How does Rey know the Wookie language? 6. Why did Snoke emphasize that BB8 was hiding with "a girl?" Why did Kylo react the way he did by saying "What Girl?" Doesn't that imply they know of her and her powers already? 7. Why does Finn defect after being trained his whole life as a Stormtrooper? Is he Force-sensitive? 8. Where did Snoke come from? How do Luke, Leia, and Han know him? Why did they let him influence Ben Solo? How could he influence Ben to turn against his own parents and family? If Han and Leia knew Snoke was manipulating Ben, why did Luke only learn of his evil mind that one night and try to murder him? 9. Where did this First Order come from? Why is the galaxy welcoming another authoritarian dictatorship after clearly celebrating the birth of a new democracy at the end of RotJ? 10. Why did Leia's Resistance have to be so small and on the down-low? Why couldn't they openly declare themselves an army of the New Republic fighting the potential rise of a new evil empire? 11. What happened to the Knights of Ren? Weren't they supposed to help overthrow Luke? 12. Why did Captain Phasma give up so easily at the first hint of danger? 13. How does Rey know the Jedi mind trick? 14. What is Kylo's obsession with Darth Vader? Why would he admire Vader when he knows from his own parents and uncle that Anakin Skywalker turned back to the light? What about Vader is he trying to emulate? 15. How did Maz get Luke's original lightsaber? 16. What's up with the scene where Maz asks Han, "So who's the girl?" and Han looks her in the eye and the scene cuts away. Further implication that he knows something secret about Rey. 16. If Rey is just a nobody, then why would Luke's lightsaber "call" to her? Why does Rey have the vision when she touches the lightsaber? Why is Obi Wan's voice a part of that vision? 17. Why does Leia act like she knows Rey when they first meet? A general hugging a perfect stranger? Weird. 18. Why does C3PO have the red arm that he's so self-conscious about? 19. Why does R2D2 awaken the moment Rey is in his presence? 20. Why did Luke run away? Some nerd posted this at the previously cited Hamill critical of TLJ’s version of Luke Skywalker

https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-ways-donald-tr...-100013259.html Five ways Donald Trump has failed to drain the swamp $1.63 billion spent on lobbying this administration already. Not counting revenues from rooms reserved at Trump Intl. Hotel in DC by lobbyists or foreign governments.

QUOTE (fathom @ Dec 22, 2017 -> 08:19 PM) You mean besides Blake Griffin (Bradford also won Heisman that year) Oops....well, Griffin was completely dominant, albeit one dimensional offensively at that point.

OU just destroyed Northwestern...Young is like a combination of Curry’s release with a bit of Nash and Lillard to his game. Should be an even better defender. Kruger is definitely headed for the Hall of Fame. One of the most underrated coaches the last 20-30 years. Pretty crazy to have the Heisman winner and POY for bb the same year. Buddy Hield, Wayman Tisdale and Hollis Price probably the best three OU players since the 80’s.

Play Castro at third? Do we really want him around Anderson and Moncada?

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/2017s-b...-140114709.html Box office winners and losers for 2017

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 22, 2017 -> 01:42 PM) I am trying to understand why they would claim this guy and not have any interest in anyone but 2 rule 5 guys. Saving for Machado, Donaldson, Arenado...

See, the American people are not giving Trump a fair chance. The MSM only focuses on the negative...every day, there are thousands of comments online wishing heart attacks and assassinations. Back when I was growing up, we used to respect the president, regardless of his political party. Like during the Eisenhower years, when we still had separate but equal education. Fight back! Donate today.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/...d-sport-stadium Here’s a solution out of the Jeff Sessions playbook...hopefully all blah colored drug dealers to neatly play into stereotypes.

Let’s put it another way. With America, Europe and Japan all suffering from aging populations with a narrowing middle class, who are US corporations going to sell to in the future in order to maintain their profits? Apple was recently gaining around 81% of all the net profit in the world mobile phone market...yet that share is slowly being eroded, where the Chinese are making high quality phones with better cameras at 1/3rd the price. Can Americans even afford the latest iphone? Another example, China will have their own passenger jets so they don’t have to buy from Boeing or Airbus. Essentially, the future world is shaping up as a battle between the US (Amazon) and China (Alibaba, Ten Cent, JD) to sell to India, Indonesia and the rest of the developing world. The other main advantage for the US (beyond Apple and Amazon) is Silicon Valley/intellectual creativity and freedom. Of course, the HUGE problem is we have no money left for infrastructure (Trump admin will eventually argue for privatization), higher education, social services and dealing with the opioid crisis. For the second year in a row, we’re the only developing country with a declining life expectancy, largely due to the drug crisis/hollowing out of the middle class and obesity. Oh, let’s not forget highest percentage of incarceration in the developed world, too. And what signs have we seen that American leaders are actually capable of coming up with a fair/truly bipartisan solution to the impending crisis that increased defense spending, debt payments and Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid growth are leading towards, the infamous financial cliff?