caulfield12

New infrastructure plan coming out....pass all the costs down to states and municipalities, aim is to reallocate any Federal program’s money that goes to poor people, loads of toll bridges and toll roads for the private sector to profit from, lots of well-qualified Trump officials supervising the permitting process (yet another job for Jared?) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-half-...-220006903.html Everybody seems to favor new and improved roads and bridges. It’s finding the money to pay for them that’s the problem. President Trump will unveil a long-awaited infrastructure plan on Monday with a lofty goal: to stimulate $1.5 trillion in new spending to modernize the nation’s transportation and public works systems. But the plan won’t identify any new revenue sources to finance those projects. Instead, it will call for killing other programs and shifting that money over to infrastructure. “They’re not serious about infrastructure,” says a representative of the business community familiar with the White House plans. “They don’t want to put any new money into it. They’re going to use it as political bait, to portray the Democrats as getting in the way of rebuilding the country.” Though Trump is calling for $1.5 trillion in new infrastructure spending, most of that wouldn’t be federal money. The Trump plan only calls for $200 billion in new federal funds, above what Washington already spends, which would be taken from other programs. Those funds would be used in a variety of ways to seed or incentivize projects. The rest of the money would come from states, cities and private sources. Trump also wants to speed the permitting process, requiring approvals in 24 months or less. His plan would cut back on bureaucratic overlap by identifying a single agency to take the lead for every permit required, eliminating duplicative procedures. “The process we have in the United States just takes way too long and is not really focused on outcomes,” a senior White House official told reporters on February 10. “We want to shorten the process while at the same time preserving environmental protections.” Aetna California scandal demonstrates why private insurance “death panels” shouldn’t be trusted to make medical decisions https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/11/health/aetna...tion/index.html

QUOTE (bmags @ Feb 11, 2018 -> 06:08 AM) Dodgers have luxury tax issues the cubs don’t have. And the odds would be staked pretty high that he’d be returning to LA if he’d won one of those World Series starts. Otoh, his FA asking price might have been a notch or two higher and the Dodgers still have do have plenty of potential starters as well as the trade market and a deep system. We haven’t heard anything about the Cubs having legit interest in keeping Arrieta after it became obvious his stuff was falling off last year. Finally, if the Cubs win another World Series in the next four years and Darvish plays a key role, nobody will regret the contract that much because they kept their window open for 6-7 years, which is pretty incredible in this day and age of MLB.

QUOTE (BlackSox13 @ Feb 10, 2018 -> 09:25 PM) Bazinga! Because Lester/Heyward/Darvish accounting for 80M+ per year is something to behold and admire. Like Heyward, cubs fans will come to regret this contract soon enough. How many teams haven’t regretted a contract of six years or more in length? Probably only the Angels with Trout. Cubs still well under luxury tax...$158 million across roughly 20 players. And they still have Almora, Happ, Baez, Schwarber, etc.

Wigginton needs to go pro...already.

The selling point on the ESPN blurb was his sterling ERA in eight career starts against NL Central teams...

Pressure back to the Brewers to put a deal together for Archer or sign Arrieta/Cobb/Lynn at least...

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 10, 2018 -> 01:44 PM) 1) they are rebuilding 2) they are rebuilding 3) they are rebuilding, and nobody cares about David Robertson’s feelings when he is a reliever making 10+ million a year There are exactly $13 million reasons the NY Post reports he’s happy with whatever role they give him. With Green, Kahnle, Betances and Chapman, that’s five guys with closer stuff.

Big 12 has argument for 8 teams now with Ok State winning at Kansas and WVU the last two weekends. Oklahoma, otoh, might be the likeliest team to get bounced in the first round with the way they’ve played the last 3 weeks. They have gone from #4 to out of the Top 25 with a loss at Iowa State likely now. And shouldn't there be more excitement about a rare Top 5 Big10 match-up?

“But there are some very fine abusers on both sides...” When will Christians actually take the plank out of their own eyes to see Trump for who he is and not who they project him to be? https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/09/t...egations-401367 When a female reporter said Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbed her arm and threw her to the ground, Trump’s response was,“Who said they were bruises from that? How do you know those bruises weren’t there before?” He said he’d reviewed the video of the incident. He went on: “To me, you know if you’re going to get squeezed, wouldn’t you think that she would have yelled out a scream or something?” He did not express any sympathy for the female reporter or regret about the incident. The week after Roger Ailes resigned from Fox News in the summer of 2016 when the sexual harassment allegations became overwhelming, Trump rallied to his defense: “I can tell you that some of the women that are complaining, I know how much he’s helped them.” Trump’s response to reports of payouts over sexual harassment by fired Fox News host Bill O’Reilly: “He is a good person.” His assessment was that O’Reilly, “a person I know well,” shouldn’t have settled. Because, Trump said: ‘“I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.”

https://sports.yahoo.com/fox-news-pulls-exe...-215958834.html

Trump gonna lose the woman’s vote? Nah... ”Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation," the President tweeted. "Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?" Two domestic violence staffers gone in consecutive days, one handling the most sensitive documents with no security clearance on an everyday basis. (But...look at his sterling academic credentials!...Rhodes Scholar...but didn’t we learn this lesson from Bill Clinton previously?) 40+ still working without clearances after ALL the handwringing about Hillary emails. Yet the idea of Mick Mulvaney as Chief Of Staff doesn’t exactly seem much better. One thing’s for sure, you can stick a fork in Kelly. So much for all those great generals, Flynn and Kelly gone, McMaster is just completely ignored because he’s too honest and detail-oriented for Trump’s limited attention span and inability or indifference about reading/research beyond Fox & Friends/Hannity. Mattis is the only one to stand the test of time.

Isn’t Newsweek on the verge of bankruptcy? https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/opinions/bud...izer/index.html A big victory for Trump The next item on the agenda is immigration, and here, President Trump really has the potential to control the terms of the debate. Democrats enter into this debate in a terrible fix. The President will put on the table an extremely difficult choice. If Democrats want to reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, and protect the Dreamers from being deported, they need to agree to an extraordinarily restrictive and reactionary set of policies that will close the borders to millions of others and end the liberalized immigration policies that the nation has had on the books since 1965. Gone is the hope to achieve the kind of grand bargain on immigration -- which would have provided a path to citizenship for millions living here without authorization and with uncertain futures -- that Presidents George W. Bush and Obama had hoped to achieve. Now, Democrats may have to settle for the reinstatement of DACA in exchange for giving right-wing, hard-line Republicans almost everything else they want. Even if some conservatives say no to DACA, the budget bill shows how Trump can build a coalition without them. Without being able to threaten the administration on the budget, the only real threat that Democrats now possess is to kill an immigration deal that includes DACA. The problem is that President Trump can live with that; they can't.

But then there are the Trout, Kolek, Brady Aiken, Appel situations where scouts have a near universal consensus on a player at a given point in time and then the group consensus shifts with increasing minor league at bats or innings pitched. Obviously, injuries play a huge role, as well. It would be interesting to see how any scouts are still standing by their original views on Rutherford. And, as someone noted, there’s a long list of guys like Zunino, Chris Taylor, Marwin Gonzalez, Jose Ramirez or Turner who simply took an extra 2-3 years to find themselves, usually with 2nd or 3rd organizations. Fwiw, Tyler Flowers finally became a Top Ten catcher how many years after we traded for him? And the same can be argued to an extent about the Sox remaining patient with Avi Garcia, or even Leury, before he experienced all those health issues the second half.

QUOTE (turnin' two @ Feb 9, 2018 -> 12:13 PM) I know they didn't have great years, but I certainly wouldn't count out Buehrle, Contreras or Garcia coming up big in a one game shot. I always thought that team had enough offense to just carry Anderson's lack of production in CF to have his glove in the lineup. I seem to remember thinking Makowiak cost the team 3-4 games in CF (not his fault, he shouldn't have been in that position). http://www.espn.com/mlb/player/splits/_/id/5373/year/2006 Contreras wasn’t the same pitcher after the injury in late May that year. 5.40 ERA after the Break. Buehrle 6.44 after the ASB. Freddy Garcia at 4.12 would have been the best choice, probably. But his k-rate was already dipping precipitously. Jerks went through his own issues in the second half...so our lockdown bullpen disappeared as well (Politte/Cotts, etc.)

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Feb 9, 2018 -> 10:23 AM) That team was never more than 3 games under and that was at 1-4. Yes, they were 26 over at the ASB. Afterwards, they played under .500 ball, finishing just 18 over.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 9, 2018 -> 10:51 AM) There was just a quinnipiac poll on general immigration. Something like 54% the same and then split the rest between increasing immigration and the white nationalist position. This was from Obama’s second term, but it’s impossible for me to believe the numbers have actually improved. New Rasmussen poll finds only 31 percent favor increasing immigration and that may be because only 18 percent of Americans think legal immigration is running higher than 500,000 per year. The real rate is more than a million per year. 58 percent of respondents either supported lower immigration levels or maintaining current levels. The poll found that 31percent of Americans support increasing the number of legal immigrants into the country if the United States can fully secure the border and prevent future illegal immigration. 29 percent say the United States should decrease legal immigration levels, and 29 percent would rather retain current legal immigration levels. Therefore, a total of 58 percent do not want to increase legal immigration levels. Another poll I found had e-verify as the most popular immigration reform, more popular than a pathway to citizenship.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 9, 2018 -> 10:10 AM) It's not evenly split. Huge majorities want to protect dreamers. A majority wants immigration to stay the same, 1/4 wants to increase and a 1/4 wants to decrease. As far as losing Hispanic voters, why do you think Republicans are working at every level to delegitimize democratic institutions and outcomes? They get far fewer votes and still get solid majorities, and they suppress the vote on top of that. If you make it about specifically protecting those 690,000 Dreamers, either citizenship or residency, the numbers are in the 80’s. If you generically ask it, without any mention of Dreamers, DACA or illegals...about immigration, it’s much more opaque. It’s all in how you frame the survey question. Besides the fact we have about 98% in Congress approving stronger Russian sanctions with no accountability for the executive branch for intentionally defying the will of the people with nary an explanation. You’re just as likely to win an argument with a Tea Partier that fiscal conservatives don’t really exist because Reagan, Bush and Trump all cut taxes disproportionately to the advantage of the upper class while simultaneously blowing up Federal budgets...then used those deficits to justify “desperately needed” cuts to social programs. Meanwhile, Democratic presidents have run excellent economies (Clinton) or had to spend trillions (Obama) fixing the messes created before they assumed office.

How long until Allen signs with the Cavs?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 9, 2018 -> 09:34 AM) There's no reason at all to reduce legal immigration. We shouldn't make the white nationalist position the starting point for discussions. If that’s the position, then nothing will happen until at least 2021. Because it’s pretty unlikely the Senate can tip blue with the House in November. Realistically, they will keep kicking the can down the road until they really need Democratic cover (over an infrastructure bill?) House Republicans don’t want an “amnesty” vote on their records before midterms. The country is pretty evenly split three ways...1/3rd want more immigration, 1/3rd want less and 1/3rd would like it to remain the same. In the long-term, the Republicans have to be aware of how many potential voters they’re alienating. They (Hispanics) weren’t motivated enough to vote last election because they didn’t have a clue how bad Trump would turn out to be...but they will vote in droves the next two election cycles, if the Democratic Party can prevent itself from tearing in half over the issue.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 9, 2018 -> 09:16 AM) Or the current playoff format where they would have made the playoffs. That team was 8 games under .500 after the ASB and looking at the same odds as the 2008 team faced in TB after Quentin went down. What starting pitcher was going to win a wild card game at that point?

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201...rts-daca-216954 Politico panel solves the immigration issue. Sort of. Basically, the Dreamers (690,000) would get a pathway to citizenship (number of years still not defined) in exchange for a 50% cutback in the Diversity Visa Lottery and 25,000 fewer family (chain/family reunification) visas for the next three years. Or simply the Dreamers for doing away completely with the Diversity Visa lottery program. Expanding the numbers to an amount between 1.3 to 1.8 million would bring the wall/border security of $25 billion into play, in addition to the visa cutbacks above. More than 1.8 million, visa cutbacks/the Wall/e-verify are all in play. Somehow, I have a feeling the House Republicans would never accept something that seems fairly reasonable. Fresco—described by Jawetz as “the consummate deal maker”—was intrigued by the Dreamer-for-diversity-visa trade. Fresco said he preferred trimming visa numbers for immigrants who might come in the future to stepping up enforcement to deport immigrants already here. “I always say I have no principles,” he said, “but I actually do have one, which is sort of minimize net pain, maximize net happiness in the universe. … And so, I do think the act of removing someone from the United States is such a pain-inducing act, as opposed to denying someone entry into the United States, which is pain-inducing but not as much. I do place a higher value on maintaining a person here than I do on a person’s entry.” .... Brown, who worked at the Department of Homeland Security under Republican and Democratic administrations, had a slightly different analysis of the wall. “I agree that it’s a boondoggle, it’s a waste of money, but I also know, having worked with DHS, they’re not going to build the great wall of Mexico,” she said. “They can’t, they won’t. President Trump will be long out of office even if he serves two terms before there is an actual wall. … All of the farmers and ranchers in Texas and New Mexico will be an eminent-domain hell for decades. … The reality is, it’s not happening, which is why it’s easy for me to say, OK, I will trade. Mr. Trump, you can have your 25 billion to try to build your wall in exchange for these Dreamers.” At the end of the session, however, none of the negotiators thought the real Congress would be anywhere near as successful as they were. Camarota, Fresco and Jawetz all agreed that Congress would most likely do nothing by March 5. The best they expected was that lawmakers would approve a short-term DACA extension to punt the issue down the road for at least another year. Brown, the optimist in the group, gave even odds between Congress doing nothing and punting for a year or so. “If I’m in Vegas,” Fresco said, “1-to-2 on nothing, 3-to-1 on a one-year punt, 75-to-1 on a deal, on an actual deal.” If they’re right, the Dreamers’ future in this country will be in limbo once again.

We’ve essentially added another $3 trillion to the deficit...giving the military far more than even they asked for (when they can’t even keep track of $500 million) despite having an economy that was finally humming along on its own without any government intervention. Not to mention the increased costs of issuing more and more debt/bonds in the future, due to overheating that wasn’t called for except in Trump’s imagination. Conservatives In Name Only.

QUOTE (soxforlife05 @ Feb 9, 2018 -> 04:40 AM) Some people still haven't had enough of the veteran stop gap thing. Sheesh. Some things never change. And before you flame me, take a look at the bullpen before you say we are going to make a miraculous run this year. It's a transition year. Since the Shields trade blunder they have been making all the right decisions on acting on trades and not acting on other rumored trades/signings that would've been detrimental to the rebuild. Let's hope it stays that way. With the possible exception of selling low on Robertson/Kahnle/Frazier...

QUOTE (greg775 @ Feb 8, 2018 -> 08:44 PM) Note the difference in tone five years ago. This was a very polite post from somebody disagreeing with Greg. In five years we've gone to a more extreme tone in our responses many times. And why do you believe that’s the case?

Carlos Gonzalez, Eduardo Nunez, Jose Bautista (declining for last two years), Logan Morrison, Lucas Duda, Jarrod Dyson, Carlos Gomez and Cameron Maybin all still available at bargain prices.