caulfield12

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/217383778/to...y-mlb-pipeline/

"Jeff Sessions is an honest man. He did not say anything wrong. He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional," Trump said. "This whole narrative is a way of saving face for Democrats losing an election that everyone thought they were supposed to win. The Democrats are overplaying their hand. They lost the election and now, they have lost their grip on reality. The real story is all of the illegal leaks of classified and other information. It is a total witch hunt!" On Twitter, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned that Sessions should never have been confirmed at all, but now there is reason to remove him. "Now Jeff Sessions is AG -- the final say on the law enforcement investigation into ties between the Trump campaign & Russia? What a farce. This is not normal," she tweeted. "This is not fake news. This is a very real & serious threat to the national security of the United States." So much for the unifying tone TUES night. Out the window already. Both sides firmly entrenched yet again. http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/02/politics/dem...call/index.html

QUOTE (Reddy @ Mar 2, 2017 -> 07:41 PM) This thing is just going up in flames. I love every second of it. Except if that happens you're still left with Pence or Ryan as president...depending on your views towards those two, it could be even worse in terms of partisanship, because Trump at least can float from side to side politically and try to pick off the Democrats and might actually be able to FORGE a compromise on immigration. Of course, that might all be just "reasonable-sounding talk" from the administration and a red herring to distract from a more nefarious reality.

Another national security adviser to the Trump campaign, J.D. Gordon, also disclosed Thursday that he had met with Kislyak, this time during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. That meeting was first reported by USA Today. Gordon told CNN that along with national security advisers Carter Page and Walid Phares, Gordon stressed to the Russian envoy that he would like to improve relations with Russia. Gordon added that at no time did any inappropriate chatter come up about colluding with the Russians to aid the Trump campaign. "This is not any different than anything I said publicly and on panels," Gordon said. Gordon had advocated for language in the GOP platform that the Ukrainians not be armed in their battle against pro-Russian separatists, an effort was ultimately successful. But Gordon says he was simply advocating what Trump himself had expressed -- that he did not wish to see major war break out over the situation in Ukraine. cnn.com So you've also got one of Trump's three key advisors, Jared Kushner, admitting to meeting Kislyak http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/02/politics/rus...ions/index.html Kislyak is NOT a spy, Russia contends (hahaha!!!)

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 2, 2017 -> 12:37 PM) After a SEAL’s death in Yemen, questions persist on Trump’s decision-making process https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/2/headl...ential_approval Solution for Trump...let Pentagon call the shots and blame them later by claiming you weren't involved in decision-making process Here's hoping that the NSA/CIA has recordings of what Sessions actually said...otherwise, deny deny deny

Complacency/risk-aversion biggest issues with American workers http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-tougher-...-153036556.html Trump undoubtedly tapped into a vein of frustration among Americans fed up with the kind of economic stagnation Cowen documents. But Cowen doesn’t see Trump as a savior. “I think he’s proving to be an ineffective president who isn’t getting much done because of lack of attention to detail,” he says. “For all this talk of change, Trump is just another symbol of complacency.” Trump fulminates about protecting Americans from terrorism, for instance, and claims the government will bring relief to Americans falling behind. But he doesn’t call on Americans to take more risks, show more initiative or make short-term sacrifice for long-term gain. Where is all this heading? To more economic volatility, the continued displacement of jobs by technology, and even more feckless government, if Cowen is right. But the gloom won’t last forever. “People will be shook out of their complacency by changes and risks that are so big they can’t control them,” Cowen says. “Only then will America somehow find itself once again.”

He was the ONLY member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to meet with the Russian ambassador, period...and not just once, BUT TWICE. Flynn Manafort Cohen Sessions Tillerson Wilbur Ross http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/1...l-ties-russians Donald Jr. and Eric Trump However, he and his family have had many dealings in Russia and with Russian émigrés elsewhere. Donald Trump Jr., for example, was a keynote speaker at a Moscow real estate conference in 2008. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump Jr. said during his speech, according to reports from the time. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-g...l#storylink=cpy

https://www.yahoo.com/news/the-central-mist...-100052871.html Forget Trump's speech, look at his budget. Of course, Sessions/Russia Talk is about to take over again for the next week or so.

QUOTE (ChiSoxFanMike @ Mar 1, 2017 -> 05:39 PM) You can cherrypick individual players all you want to prove your point, but it's like comparing apples to oranges. Ynoa was nowhere as highly rated as Robert and they don't play the same position either. They're not comparable. It's not like signing Robert would prevent these pennies on the dollar signings anyway, so I'm not sure what your point is. Fwiw, Miguel SAño was the second most hyped that year, at 16, after coming into the signing season first but sliding due to collusion with the buscones, as a rumored appeared that he was overage and lying. The mom was furious. There was an agent who wanted to push him to a team for a lesser overall price where he would have received an appreciable kickback in return. Shady stuff. One example of the scouts being right, although his defensive value undercuts him.

The man is an American through and through That's the current fault line in American politics...despite Obama's 60-65% job approval/popularity ratings when he left the White House, there was the perception: 1) He wasn't patriotic and didn't wear his American flag lapel pin proudly enough 2) He apologized too much for American Exceptionalism and preferred to reach out to Islamic-majority countries more than Israel (largely this was to compensate for the shift in the other direction for 8 years under Bush) 3) That his "cool aloofness" was yet another indicator of the Democratic Party's problem attracting "average" folks between the two coastal regions of the country, the meatloaf/steak & potatoes crowd 4) Wait...he wasn't even born in America!!! 5) Obama and the Dems were globalists/corporatists who wanted to sell out the country to George Soros/Wall Street and take away everything unique and distinctive that makes America and "The American Dream" such a great symbol for the world Listening to C-SPAN there really is that 20-25% that strongly believes that Obama was the "lousiest" president in American history. It's really hard to believe that they could be so righteous in their calls for positivism now (especially due to ONE SPEECH) after watching everything that transpired with GOP obstructionism over the last 8 years. Even forgetting about the "dark/pessimistic" Trump phenomenon, the idea that Democrats now owe it to the country to work together with the president...well, that's just rich. Didn't the GOP owe it to the country to consider Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination and work with the Dems 7-8 years ago to come up with a better version of ACA...a solution they still don't have nearly a decade later? Now it's the fault of the Dems for not passing a better law, when nobody on the other side of the aisle even attempted to compromise?

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option...p;jumival=18545 Ralph Nader on Trump's speech PAUL JAY: --To some extent people that aren't that familiar with these agencies, it sounds a bit like alphabet soup. Can you give some examples of what they do and how it might affect people's lives if they're weakened? RALPH NADER: Yeah, well you know, thousands of babies are born with flippers for legs and arms in Europe because they didn't have regulation of a sedative, years ago, that was taken by pregnant women. Well, our Food and Drug Administration under the leadership of Dr. Kelsey blocked it. And so, there were no babies born with flippers for legs because-- PAUL JAY: --This is thalidomide, is it? RALPH NADER: Yeah, that was thalidomide. The Auto Safety Agency has presided with some irregular interruptions with a massive decline in fatalities and injuries on the road. The curve has gone up in the last two years, but according to Clarence Detlaw(?) of the Center for Auto Safety, 3.5 million deaths were averted because of the Federal role that started in 1966 under Lyndon Johnson, in highway vehicle and driver Safety. 3.5 million-averted deaths and you can imagine how many more injuries were averted. The American people have less lead in their blood because tetraethol(?) lead was taken off the market from gasoline by the Environmental Protection Agency. We have more efficient motor vehicles in terms of gas mileage, nothing like I would have liked, but still that has saved billions and billions of dollars. We have the Consumer Financial Protection Board that the Republicans and Trump seem to want to abolish that has brought back $11.5 billion and is cracking down on financial fraud against students with loans, fraud against mortgage shenanigans, and other such corporate violations. And the story goes on and on. Now, none of these Federal regulatory agencies besieged by corporate lobbyists and often run by people from the corporations they're supposed to regulate, have done what I would like done. But can you imagine life without them? And those are the budgets he wants to cut, so he can continue bloating the Pentagon budget which is the only agency in the country at the Federal level that is not auditable. It is violating a 1990 Federal law that went into effect in 1992 that requires them to provide auditable data to the Government Accountability Office of the US Congress. Every other agency does that. Every other Department does that, but the biggest budget of all doesn't do that. And he wants to give them more money. I mean, this is a Pentagon budget that loses billions of dollars in the Air Force spare parts which they buy again because they can't locate them in the far-flung warehouses around the world. This is a Pentagon budget that admits to the loss, unaccountably of $9 billion in the first few months of the criminal invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush and Dick Chaney. That's $9 billion with a "B", and he wants to give them more money. The hapless Democratic Party, of course, won't point this out, but your reporter, Tom Hedges has written about the not auditable Pentagon budget. But unfortunately, the rest of the mainstream press is not picking it up. So, you can have these crazy contradictions and it's what he doesn't mention, for example, he talks about terrorism, and a few homicides by illegal immigrants, he doesn't talk about the immigrants who are in retail stores in the inner city who have been slain by criminals who were born in the US throughout the country. He doesn't mention that at all but what he ALSO doesn't mention is that 5,000 Americans a week are dying because of mishaps that are preventable in hospitals. Who says so -- last March, Johns Hopkins University Medical School put it out -- it's 250,000 Americans dying every year through preventable causes, hospital-induced infections, hospital malpractice, hospital errors, bad combinations of pharmaceuticals, and he doesn't even mention it. That's 5,000 a week, 800 a day and the doctors who did this study said that was the minimum, conservative figure. That is probably much higher if they took clinics into account. And then he talks about abolishing Obamacare, and he doesn't mention that the government he's heading is being defrauded $60 billion a year, Medicare's being defrauded by corporate and other crooks in the healthcare industry. He doesn't even mention that. He doesn't mention that over $340 billion this year will be drained away through computerized billing fraud and abuse in the provision of healthcare sales. $340 billion according to the applied mathematician expert Professor Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard University and an earlier study by the Government Accountability Office. So, what we have here is an orchestrated speech by Donald Trump and I think they really worked to make sure there was no low level booing, as has often occurred, in State of the Union speeches, and they really worked on just massive applause that, you know, when you hear it just on the radio, it just seems orchestrated and largely exaggerated. But of course, you know, his easily-bruised ego required that kind of calming(?), that kind of support and I think the Republicans in the Congress basically agreed to it because they were hell-bent on not having any division before this big national audience -- that they wanted to show that there was unity. But actuall

Under Trump, immigrant tech workers can't even go to their local Applebee's without fearing they will be mistaken for Muslims and be shot dead. American Carnage.

Obama deported 2.5 illegal aliens under his watch, mostly from Mexico. It doesn't fit liberal talking liberal talking points, though. So other than VOICE, nothing new from Trump yet, other than perhaps expanding or threatening to the broader categories of illegals (like the mother in Arizona who self-reported) that have felony/criminal records to nearly everyone. Of course, then he turned around to "negotiate" back to the compromise of allowing many of those currently threatened to get green cards. So who really knows? Will the border wall be more fencing and an actual wall in just a few places? Probably. And where's the categorical protection/reporting mechanism for immigrants/refugees/Muslims/Jewish centers harmed or threatened by whites...or domestic terrorists? Still nothing close to actual legislation coming down the pike and we're nearly to the halfway point of the first 100 days. Way to throw Mattis and the "amazing" generals under the bus on the Yemeni raid...as well. Still completely refuses to shoulder responsibility for legitimate criticisms.

One optimistic speech can't erase 18 months of hate and divisiveness. The Freedom Caucus has already dug in against tax cuts to pay for ACA basically being another entitlement program. There's no way that the Senate will allow the State Department to be whacked, and all forms of foreign aid, both military and humanitarian. Almost all of the child care benefits are flowing towards the Top 10%. There's no way to pay for infrastructure and the border wall. How exactly is he going to lower drug prices? Another executive order? Government price controls/ceilings? What about the remaining students who are left behind on school choice? Ship them to Chicago? The border adjustment tax is a firm no go for half the GOP, at least. The GOP governors can't even agree on Medicaid, let alone the rest of ACA. No plan for ISIS or ISIL except terming it radical Islamic terrorism. Sounded presidential for one night, but that dog don't hunt on the budget adding up, as Ross Perot would say. Pandering, is what Paul Tsongas would call it back in the day. Hard to imagine the Dems crossing party lines and risking primary challenges. Hard to imagine the GOP again blowing up the budget after GW Bush.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/don...eaks/index.html Obama blamed by Trump for both press leaks and town hall protests...shocker

“PwC takes full responsibility for the series of mistakes and breaches of established protocols during last night’s Oscars,” the new statement says. “PwC partner Brian Cullinan mistakenly handed the back-up envelope for Actress in a Leading Role instead of the envelope for Best Picture to presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Once the error occurred, protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough by Mr. Cullinan or his partner.” Cullinan was one of two PwC partners charged with bringing the envelopes to the Dolby Theatre and then handing the appropriate envelope to each presenter as the various categories were called. In the wake of mix-up, it’s since been learned that Cullinan also was tweeting during the event and had tweeted a picture of best actress winner Emma Stone just minutes before he handed the wrong envelope to Warren Beatty. The new PwC statement continues, “We are deeply sorry for the disappointment suffered by the cast and crew of La La Land and Moonlight. We sincerely apologize to Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Jimmy Kimmel, ABC, and the Academy, none of whom was at fault for last night’s errors. We wish to extend our deepest gratitude to each of them for the graciousness they displayed during such a difficult moment. For the past 83 years, the Academy has entrusted PwC with the integrity of the awards process during the ceremony, and last night we failed the Academy.” https://www.yahoo.com/movies/academy-oscar-...-044028648.html

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Feb 25, 2017 -> 07:11 PM) On the Sox 1st run the announcer said the Cubs lead 1-0. Charlie O'Brien I think. Russ Langer was the one doing the whitesox.com broadcast...must have had the MLB.tv feed. Better than Melton at least. Although hoping for a bit more excitement when Collins and Moncada came up. Apparently he does Las Vegas 51's games and UNLV football.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/35-old-pitche...-192656794.html Jake Peavy's tough year

Garcia with another bad route in RF.

Trump's call for nuclear supremacy raises questions http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/25/politics/tru...enal/index.html http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trum...ssey-nec-235396 Keith Hennessey, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote in his hypothetical memo to Congress that Trump was technically correct that the national debt decreased by $19.6 billion from Jan. 20 to Feb. 23. Hennessey, however, added that if Trump had "ended his timeframe one day earlier this tweet would have been invalid and debt would have increased" by $1 billion in “the first month.” He said this is why "analysts look at debt on an annual basis." Hennessey said it looked as if Trump got his numbers from Herman Cain, who appeared on "Fox & Friends Weekend" shortly before Trump's tweet. "Because of his unique communications advantages, President Trump may be able to get away with making an argument with such a weak foundation," Hennessey wrote. "You cannot, and you should not place yourself in the position of having to address the intellectual weaknesses described above. " Hennessey also noted that former President Barack Obama signed a stimulus package the first month during his presidency and that there was a big difference in the health of the economy in 2009 to 2017. The former NEC director also wrote that it was "more concerning" that the tweet shows Trump continues to rely on TV rather than his advisers. https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats-gop-me...-192015075.html Governors spar over Medicaid reform "They want to spend less money on people's health care so they can do tax cuts for the rich. They've tried to put this camouflage on it that somehow they're giving governors flexibility. We've got plenty of flexibility," Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said. "This is not what we are asking for." While major changes to former president Barack Obama's signature health care law appear inevitable with Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, Inslee said there's still a chance that Democrats can win over GOP lawmakers who've been facing angry constituents at town hall meetings. "People are madder than hops about this. Look, there's four Republican members of the House in the state of Washington, and they're now in the witness-protection program," Inslee said. "We think churches are going to offer them sanctuary at some point, given how mad people are about this." ... A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that 8 in 10 people nationally say lawmakers should preserve federal funding that has allowed states to add coverage for roughly 11 million low-income people. Almost 7 in 10 Republicans agreed, according to the survey by the nonpartisan group.

What, execution? Forgot SANCHEZ changed his first name. And Liriano, at least he looks good in that uniform.

Kershaw only scheduled for 1 inning.

First look at Price's ACA proposal http://finance.yahoo.com/news/finally-a-ho...-214212240.html For older people, regulations that limit differences between insurance premiums of young and elderly were capped under the ACA at three-to-one. Under this new bill, they would be increased to five-to-one, meaning premiums for the elderly could skyrocket by 66%. It’s important to note that this is still a draft, unnamed, numbered, analyzed, or reviewed by the Senate. The biggest takeaway, however, is that the bill will likely not live up to President Donald Trump’s promise of “insurance for everybody." .... First off, the bill would kill the unpopular individual mandate, which ensured that not just people with pre-existing conditions would sign up. Instead, under the new bill, people who didn’t have continuous coverage would see a 30% increase in premiums for a year. As Bloomberg’s Steven Dennis noted on Twitter, that means you’d pay a penalty later instead of at tax time. In other words, it’s a mandate by another name—one that gives the illusion of choice as there’s still a penalty for people who choose not to have insurance. Also, 7 million would likely lose Medicaid coverage, and Planned Parenthood defunded.

Donald J. Trump‏ @realDonaldTrump The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo. Gee, who created that mess that Obama inherited in 2009? And I thought the US was a carnage-ridden disaster five weeks ago? Amazing recovery.

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/get-out-review...-155834435.html Get Out is getting a slew of rave reviews...satire/horror mashup https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/get_out 132 fresh, 0 rotten