caulfield12

Except we're not the Royals with all the players set to hit free agency simultaneously. We have two clearly defined groups of talent that are roughly two years or two and 1/2 years apart.

Meanwhile, Trump's popularity for threatening North Korea with nuclear Armageddon rose a full six points. President Donald Trump is finding favor in the polls following his rhetoric against North Korea earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Trump, in a warning to North Korean leader Kim Jon Un, said Pyongyang would “face fire and fury like the world has never seen” if they continued making threats against the United States and U.S. territory Guam. And since then, the president’s approval rating has jumped up six points, according to daily presidential tracking poll by Rasmussen Reports. Fifty-three percent of voters still disapproved of Trump’s job performance, according to the poll released on Friday. However, support for Trump’s job performance was up to 45 percent compared to the 39 percent reported a week ago. Meanwhile, 29 percent of voters strongly approve of the president’s job performance while 44 percent said they strongly disapprove. https://www.yahoo.com/news/threatening-nort...-172636226.html

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Aug 12, 2017 -> 10:35 PM) I know what happened, and I'm not defending it. I'm just saying that calling all the people who voted for Trump "racist" is a terrible thing to do. Why draw conclusions from my comments like that? Ahhh because you wanted to I'm guessing. But I'm not going to assume like you did. So why don't you tell me why you chose to take my simple defense of 10s of millions of nice people, and come to the conclusion that I support the actions of a domestic, racist terrorist? Please tell me how you arrived there. "Nice people" whose very silence condones the actions of overt racists...with maybe ten notable exceptions in the Republican Party today. We all remember huge arguments back and forth over the Berkeley protests...but this guy actually killed one, four were in critical condition at latest report and a total of NINETEEN injured by his intentional actions. There's no moral equivalency there. If you watch the two or three videos and still aren't repulsed by his actions, I'm not sure what can even be said anymore. Former KKK leader David Duke strikes out at Trump for condemning a white nationalist rally: 'It was White Americans who put you in the presidency' In a series of tweets Duke questioned why the president, whom he usually supports, is attacking white Americans who put him "in the presidency." https://finance.yahoo.com/news/former-kkk-l...-200532936.html

I recommend everyone reading the book "Everybody Lies" ... author interview excerpt follows. In the book, he argues with solid statistical backing that Obama would have won by 6% more in 2008/12 if not for racist elements in the electorate. Not close to fifty million, but a realistic estimate is at least FIVE to SEVEN million. As a barometer of our national consciousness, Google is as accurate (and predictive) as it gets. In 2016, when the Republican primaries were just beginning, most pundits and pollsters did not believe Trump could win. After all, he had insulted veterans, women, minorities, and countless other constituencies. But Stephens-Davidowitz saw clues in his Google research that suggested Trump was far more serious than many supposed. Searches containing racist epithets and jokes were spiking across the country during Trump’s primary run, and not merely in the South but in upstate New York, Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, rural Illinois, West Virginia, and industrial Michigan. Stephens-Davidowitz saw in the Google Trends data a racially polarized electorate, and one primed to respond to the ethno-nationalist rhetoric of Trump. There were earlier signs, too. On Obama’s 2008 election night, Stephens-Davidowitz found that “one in every hundred Google searches that included the word ‘Obama’ also included ‘KKK’” or the n-word. Searches for racist websites like Stormfront also spiked. ..... Seth Stephens-Davidowitz The first thing was that the level of racism in this country was a lot higher than I had realized. I think a lot of people thought that Trump would be done as soon as he started saying all these racially charged things. I think when you look at this internet data, you see the demand for this type of material. I mean, I had even been studying white nationalist sites like Stormfront for a long time, long before most people knew about it, and still I was shocked by how widespread the appeal of these sites were. Sean Illing This is what we should’ve been paying attention to, not these outdated polling methods. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz You can't really predict using surveys who's going to turn out in an election because everybody says they're going to vote, nobody wants to admit that they have no intention of voting. But you can predict who's going to vote based on their Google searches. People search how to vote, or where to vote, or polling places weeks before an election and that predicts that turnout will be high. In this election, you saw very, very clearly in the data that there was a huge decrease in these searches in cities with enormous African-American populations, for example. It was very clear in the Google search data that black turnout was going to be way down in 2016, and that was one of the reasons Clinton did so much worse than the polls predicted. https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/6/13...-everybody-lies

Jimenez with a 1.196 ops at Winston-Salem...Aaron Judge first half numbers. Or Frank Thomas coming out of Auburn.

Moncada looked like he totally forgot how to play the game of baseball after Thursday night's heroics...oh, well.

Moncada just handed them the lead...same time the Twins were blowing a huge lead in Detroit. (Shouldn't have traded Kintzler and Jaime Garcia.) Cardinals on verge of reeling in the Cubs, too.

How many baserunners have they lost the last 40 or so games? Have to be leading MLB in that category...and it's mostly unrelated to stealing bases.

QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Aug 12, 2017 -> 06:49 PM) Bulls***. Stop with this nonsense. I've seen a lot of Republicans, high profile Republicans, rightly calling this an act of terrorist by Nazis/white nationalists. It's a large part of Trump's base that hasn't wavered in their support. Not a perfect Venn diagram alignment, but let's not pretend all those Republicans have consistently sopoken out in similar situations against Trump. Otherwise, why make such a politically calculated statement so as not to offend those voters? What would he stand to gain?

Moncada just not picking up Kennedy...who is far from overpowering...at all tonight. At least he had that one great defensive play, his patented athletic throw going towards short LCF.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 12, 2017 -> 06:30 PM) The Nazis were there in response to the treasonous slaver's statue being taken down. That statement is taking their side. http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/...n-the-civil-war In all fairness, George Thomas is probably the only general who "heroically" turned against his home state in the Civil War. Of course, Lee wasn't just any general, he was asked by Lincoln himself to lead the Army of the Potomac across the river and to invade his home in Arlington. We need to look at context when we judge history. Is Lincoln to be denigrated because his initial solution was to send all the Southern slaves back to Africa in order to avoid war? It was pragmatic, but certainly not acceptable judging backwards in time from 2017 America.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/12/politics/tru...ment/index.html Trump's incredibly unpresidential statement on Charlottesville Chalking it all up to a violent political rhetoric that occurs on both sides and has been around for a very long time contextualizes and normalizes the behavior of people who should not be normalized. It is not everyday political rhetoric to scream epithets at people who don't look like you or worship like you. Trump's right that this sort of behavior has existed on American society's fringes for a long time -- but what we as a nation, led by our presidents, have always done is call it out for what it is: radical racism that has no place in our world. So, that's the big one. But there are other things in Trump's statement that are also worth calling out -- most notably "not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama." What Trump is doing here is pre-emptively absolving himself of blame for creating a political climate in the country in which people like these "Unite the Right" demonstrators feel emboldened enough to rally in public. Not my fault, Trump is saying. There were hate groups and hate speech under Obama too! With someone dead and more than two dozen people injured, this is, of course, not the time for assigning blame. Or for making political calculations. This is a time to say: We stand together against what we saw in Charlottesville today. Trump didn't do that. Not even close. Then, last but not least, is what Trump said a few paragraphs after his "on many sides" comment. Here it is: "Our country is doing very well in so many ways. We have record -- just absolute record employment. We have unemployment, the lowest it's been in almost 17 years. We have companies pouring into our country. Foxconn and car companies, and so many others, they're coming back to our country. We're renegotiating trade deals to make them great for our country and great for the American worker. We have so many incredible things happening in our country. So when I watch Charlottesville, to me it's very, very sad."

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 12, 2017 -> 05:41 PM) I missed this earlier. He didn't just whitewash this s*** with his "many sides," he literally took that Nazis' side with his "cherish our history." Fwiw, I took that to mean Robert E. Lee more than Nazis, but not much better in this current climate. The name of the park where the events were supposed to take place had recently changed to Remembrance Park or something like that. (The unfortunate thing is a timely and well-reviewed movie like "Detroit," about the 1967 race riots in that city, will come and go with nary a shoulder shrug.)

By late Saturday afternoon, a number of prominent Republican lawmakers including Sens. Cory Gardner, Orrin Hatch, Tim Scott, and Marco Rubio, along with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers had condemned the actions of the white supremacists in far stronger language than the president. Gardner went as far as calling the incident “domestic terrorism.” "Mr. President - we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists,” Gardner tweeted from his official account. Rubio also wrote on Twitter that it was important “for the nation to @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists." Trump’s response to the Charlottesville white nationalist demonstrations also showed the limits of Gen. John Kelly’s power as the newly-installed White House chief of staff. Kelly has spent the last two weeks trying to professionalize the decision-making process inside the White House, but he has been unable to steer Trump away from controversy, including his provocative statements on North Korea this week. Politico.com

http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?s...mp;ymd=20170812

At least three are dead right now....not sure which is more indicative of how far off the rails America has gone, this situation or North Korea? You know it's bad when you are way to the right of Orrin Hatch... Fellow Republicans slammed Trump's lack of directness and attempt to inject moral equivalence into the situation of chaos and terror. "We should call evil by its name," tweeted Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in the Senate. "My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home." "Very important for the nation to hear @POTUS describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists," tweeted Sen. Marco Rubio, a competitor for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. "Mr. President - we must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism," tweeted Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican. CNN.com

https://www.yahoo.com/style/breitbart-edito...-174958691.html Apparently a percentage of the right wing now believes images of the Statue of Liberty are essentially anti-Trump/anti-alt right...

The "average" American retirement investor simply needs a balanced set of no-load index funds from Vanguard...if you want to get fancy, you can add small/midcap and real estate investment trusts to provide some diversification as those two groups over the past twenty years are performing as well as any categories. As we all know, less than 2% (the opposite of the 98% quoted) of professional investment advisors can actively beat these indexes on a regular basis, and they're so talented they're not working with those with under $100/$250/$500k net worth families anyway. Probably starting boutique or hedge funds for high net worth individuals. We also know the "average" investor following this Vanguard strategy would be at a 6.5-7.0% rate of return going back to the 1998-2002 financial "crises." Yet those with investment advisors constantly buying and selling, churning their clients' money in constant search for higher returns (and often they advise mutual funds with front end loads that kill return rates) are probably in that 4-6% range and making more money on your portfolio than they should be on commissions/brokers' fees. If they can consistently put up 10% ROI, great, but that's not the case for your typical Edward Jones or Charles Schwab guy. And I thought the Republicans were always in favor of getting rid of Social Security so people could manage their own money and get higher than a 2.5% or whatever the government generates??? I have never met a single Republican who thinks they can't manage get their own money better, and that's roughly 35% of the US population, much higher than the quoted 2%. (See GW Bush administration efforts to privatize.)

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 12, 2017 -> 07:18 AM) I will never understand why it's supposed to be good for these guys to be able to sell you what's in their best interest, not yours. If nothing else, there should be an additional level of scrutiny/accountability in their dealings with anyone over age 60...

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/trump-calls-guam-...topstories.html What next, Trump Intl. Tower in Guam? Insanity. Well, the new D.C. Hotel has already made $2 million in profits, so why not? Can't believe the biggest concern here is Guam tourism increasing and hotel occupancy rates. He can invite this Guam governor the next time they have a cabinet meeting where everyone obsequiously praises Trump as they go around the table...

Greg has been reading too many JFK conspiracy theory books apparently...

Who didn't love Uribe, Sandy Alomar or Omar Vizquel? I can see nearly everyone disliking Alex Rios, and maybe getting annoyed with the antics of a Melky and now Yolmer, but it hasn't seemed like he has gone particularly overboard about it.

QUOTE (Quin @ Aug 11, 2017 -> 11:23 PM) Idk man, might have prevented my grandmother from blowing generational wealth in the 80s. Two sides to every coin, industry insiders vs. "mom and pop" investors who can't easily recover from a major investment setback in their 40s or 50s.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/11/politics/dem...feud/index.html The argument that could derail the Democratic Party

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Aug 11, 2017 -> 04:47 PM) Last I checked, the Royals played in Missouri- not England. He has no place to talk. It comes from the American Royal... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Royal The Kansas City Royals began play in 1969 as an expansion team. The year before, the team held a name-the-team contest that received more than 17,000 entries. Sanford Porte, a bridge engineer from the suburb of Overland Park, was named the winner for his “Royals” entry. His reason had nothing to do with royalty. “Kansas City’s new baseball team should be called the Royals because of Missouri’s billion-dollar livestock income, Kansas City’s position as the nation’s leading stocker and feeder market and the nationally known American Royal parade and pageant,” Porte wrote.