caulfield12

http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/10...?page=1&c=y Six ways to improve the Twins going into next season. It will be interesting to see if KW takes a shot at Crain if they don't resign him...although he'd be overpaying based on 2010. Guerrier could become available, Rauch obviously as well. Pavano might be gone if he asks for too much money (and more than 2 years, which he arguably might get from someone)...Hudson will undoubtedly be gone as well, and they're going to have to make a decision on JJ Hardy. The writer's main idea was trying to deal Young and Slowey for Greinke. I think it would take more than that, personally. I don't think Danks (or Floyd) and Quentin would be enough, either.

QUOTE (Elgin Slim @ Oct 10, 2010 -> 08:39 PM) For the time being there are only 2 ways to win the AL pennant: The first way is to spend like the Yankees and Red Sox, on both the Major league and Minor League levels. The second way is to go into the s***ter for a 5 year period, and emerge with the amount of talent that the Rays have built over the last 5-7 years. Another note: When you spend or draft, at the end of the process, you must possess 2 pitchers with #1 stuff, one of which pitches like a #1, and the other of which pitches like a #2 or #3. The period between 2004-2008 was special because the Yankees made some really bad contract choices. When the marquee free agents returned to the market it was back to this way. As long as the Yankees have a $200 MM payroll and spend it wisely, these are the only ways to compete with them. It does not matter what you do, The Yankees will always win unless you have somewhere close to the amount of talent that they do. This is why, IMO there should be a cap of a $150 MM payroll in baseball. Unfortunately, there is a more level playing field in the NL. Not to mention from the early 80's through 1995.

http://espn.go.com/new-york/columns/story?...&id=5656406 Since Ron Gardenhire took over as manager in 2002, the Twins are 16-45 (.262) against the Yankees during the regular season, which Elias says is the worst record any team has against an opponent during that span. The record is even worse when you include Minnesota's 2-10 postseason mark against the Yankees: 18-55 (.246). That's a worse winning percentage than the 1962 Mets had. The Twins so resemble the Washington Generals to the Yankees' Harlem Globetrotters that I keep expecting to see Derek Jeter pull down Joe Mauer's pants and toss a bucket of confetti into the Minnesota dugout.

They've won 3 out of their last 22 post-season games. That's even worse than our record against Minnesota in the 2nd half this past decade. What are the odds of losing 12 in a row? One more to go for the Twins to tie the Boston Red Sox record with that loss next year, haha. Not sure if that idea will stick long with the marketing team....well, at least they sent out their season ticket renewal packages and got commitments before this series, just like the White Sox in 2008. Three sweeps in a row (NYY, NYY, Oakland in 2006). The only team they've beaten in a series is the Oakland A's, 3-2 way back in 2002. 2-12 versus the Yankees. I think I read that they had the lead in something like 8 of the last 9 playoff games against the Yankees and ended up coughing up all those leads. Normally, you score the first run or lead in a game, you have around a 55-65% chance of winning. Pretty amazing. It will be also interesting to see if they keep Capps AND how well Nathan comes back next year. Easy to forget about that guy.

QUOTE (kitekrazy @ Oct 9, 2010 -> 09:47 PM) That's why Johann Santana wanted out. Which makes me bring up another subject. Some guys that leave the Twins organization don't have the best careers after that. Sure there's a few but how many guys on that roster would be great on another team? Twins finished 2/17 with RISP. Hunter did pretty well his first two seasons in LA, but I think that was a bad contract and will get worse over time. Jacque Jones really faded after leaving Minnie...same with Koskie, Rivas, Shannow Stewart, Mientkiewicz, Hawkins, Guardado (he was okay for a couple years), etc. David Ortiz is the big exception, although the PEDS obviously played a role. AJ Pierzynski has continued to have a decent career with the exception of the 2004 season in SF. Kyle Lohse pitched pretty well in the NL after leaving the Twins. JC Romero has hung around, but never as good as 2002-04, another PEDS case with Rincon as well. Losing Radke from the heart of that rotation also hurt...he was the "bulldog" of that team. Pavano's kind of taken on that role, but still not the same.

They're looking very beatable to the Yankees, not the White Sox. They have another possible ace coming up quickly in former 1st rounder Kyle Gibson from Univ. of Missouri. Possibly they'll lose Hudson and Thome...but they could bring back both without any problems. Casilla could end up as the starting 2B again or Punto. If Morneau comes back (BIG IF), then the need for Thome is less pressing if they hold onto Cuddyer/Kubel/Young again. My guess is that Cuddyer might be the odd man out. Then again, paying Mauer $23 million is going to start to affect their overall payroll structure as well. Plus you're going to have to deal with a little bit of apathy from the fanbase after the "Braves reputation" starts to affect their psyche. Not so fun when you're something like 3-20 since 2003 and have lost 12 post-season games in a row. Was just listening to their announcing team and they think that Sabathia coming far inside to Thome with no retaliation is one of the keys to this series. How many times have the White Sox been hit or busted inside or been run over by the likes of Hunter and Young without any attempt at shoving them back in the face? Same story, same song. Just different teams. They're even arguing the stadium music and crowd get the fans more charged up in NY than Minnesota. The Twins' fans kind of gave up and had that "oh no, here we go again" feeling, which it's hard to blame them for really. And the Twins, unlike against the White Sox...are off the top steps of the dugout and hanging their heads in defeat. 1. Liriano 2. Pavano 3. Gibson 4. Blackburn 5. Duensing 6. Slowey 7. Perkins

I guess a lot of the stories in the NY papers have been about the 2004 collapse against Boston and the fact that the Yankees have never advanced and won the World Series when they came in as the Wild Card. Haha.

I would like someone to enumerate why they believe things will actually get better in the US over the next two years...assuming that House will turn over to the GOP and the Dems will lead by 1-2 in the Senate. Basically, NOTHING will happen over the following two years. There will be endless House hearings and investigations into Obama's citizenship, repealing or euthanizing the health care bill and vilifying illegal immigrants and Muslims. We can't get a NY/NJ tunnel, but you can be sure we will find the funds for a wall to protect us from Mexico. In essence, we'll have wasted two more years that will put us further behind (China, India and Germany) because we'll eventually end up giving tax cuts to the top 2%, which will blow another $700,000,000 into the deficit, even though the deficit is supposedly our biggest problem all of a sudden, even though it was mysteriously wasn't for 8 years under Bush. The funny thing is that Obama will be blamed for obstructionism (and effectively) when he attempts to block the extension of the Bush tax cuts! Basically, the best chance the Democrats have is Sarah Palin winning the nomination or running as the Tea Party candidate...or a Tea Party candidate like Ron Paul running as a 3rd party and siphoning off votes like Ross Perot did in 1992 (essentially electing Clinton with his 19.5%) or Ralph Nader did in 2000 (essentially changing the course of history completely by giving us Bush instead of Bore, I mean Gore).

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_leagu...?urn=mlb-275698 Funny column since it's poking fun at the Twins...but, indirectly at the AL Central teams like the Sox for getting run over 6 (almost 7) out of 9 years. As Dick Allen says, it's pretty hard to be overconfident as an organization when you've won a total of two post-season series in 93 years! Of course, the corollary to that is the last 11 years for the White Sox have been comparatively great as we've put up seasons with 95 wins, 86, 99, 90, 89 and 88 victories.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 11:23 AM) British treatment of indigenous people was pretty abhorrent no matter the continent. Colonialism, in general, is terrible for existing populations. But you're hearkening back to the great days of the British Empire as some sort of glory period or situation to strive for. While simultaneously asking for all troops on foreign soil to be withdrawn. Your arguments are not only bad, they're self-contradicting. edit: except your tea party=pity party line. The observation that it's really just pissed off typical conservatives is spot-on imo. I was merely replying to Northside by providing a better example of comparison....as he took issue with my devolving into another Russia line. One can only wonder how China and India will wield their newfound economic power and what will happen when political self-interest and natural resources accumulation and protection come into direct conflict around the world over the next half century. It seems pretty apparent we simply cannot continue our present level of military spending without destroying our social umbrella. Of course my arguments are bad and indefensible...unfortunately, I think there's a 25% minority of Americans who might agree with them and agree that they should pay no taxes to Washington and that every function of government can be done more efficiently and cheaply at the local level. I think we already tried that experiment, it was called the Articles of Confederation and it was a complete debacle, starting with individual currencies printed by each of the colonies as well as zero coordination of state militias to protect against potentially overwhelming threats both from Europe and a few more aggressive Native American tribes.

Of course, the main purpose of all this is to play Devil's Advocate...to force one to defend the idea of Federal government functions. Obviously, we wouldn't do well without a Federal court system, checks and balances, Supreme Court, etc., no matter what our respective opinions of the individual decisions they've made over the last decade, dating back to the Gore decision in 2000. I would love to believe the Tea Party is something other than dressed-up libertarianism with a racist bent because of Obama's presence in the White House....and I fear we will be hearing the phrase "starve the beast" hundreds of times over the next two years. Well, whatever you say about the GOP, they've predicated their election strategy around simply saying no to all spending...even though this spending was obviously okay with them from 2001-2008. So they're to be applauded for that nakedly-obvious obstructionism which has not effectively been countered by Obama and his administration.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 11:13 AM) What does that have to do with the validity of British Colonialism and how terrible it was for the indigenous populations? Because IMO, America has done almost as many horrible things as Britain.... And the same things can be said about our treatment of Native Americans as well, although it was mostly contained on the N.American continent. Obviously, the treatment of aborigines in Australia was pretty abhorrent, though.

QUOTE (G&T @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 09:13 AM) Honestly, why don't we want to settle into a reduced role in the world? This is something that I ponder. I know there is a chest thumping aspect to it, but would it really hurt the US? I remember all the talk of the "peace dividend" at the end of the Clinton administration and defense spending was headed for the 12-15% range versus 20-22%, but then 9/11 happened and Iraq....and the rest is history. Of course, Japan and Germany both have had their periods of imperialism too. My Chinese students are still being taught to hate Japan because of something that happened almost 60 years ago.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 07:46 AM) Yeah, it's a damn shame British colonialism finally came to an end. I'll leave the issue of the assassinations of Guevara, Allende, Lumumba, Castro (multiple attempts), Trujillo in the Dominican Republic...for another debate. I do think it's hard to list many countries that are DEMONSTRABLY better off for our involvement over the last 40-50 years. South Korea, certainly. But North Korea has evolved into one of our biggest enemies. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, jury's still far from out. Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos....probably no appreciable difference, except in the lives of all the Vietnamese immigrants and "boat people" who were given asylum in the US. Haiti or the Dominican? Don't see how things could possibly be worse in the first country, despite all of our attempts at helping them. Grenada? Too small to matter... Nicaragua and Panama? While Japan emerged neutered at the end of World War II, we did a great amount to help rebuild their country and eventually their burgeoning economy. Yugoslavia/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Serbia/Croatia...time will probably argue this as a "net win" compared to what might have happened. Somalia? Big PR disaster. Colombia? Maybe a slight improvement. Pakistan? Disaster, especially Musharraf and the inability to get to bin Laden. Rwanda? Even bigger failure of Clinton's leadership not to get involved when we had the werewithal to do so, but instead deferred to incompetent UN troops. It is interesting to me that India and Australia have two of the strongest economies in the world...not sure what if any conclusion can be drawn from that, versus the

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 07:45 AM) You're not going to get 75% of the country to agree on anything beyond very high-level "policies" like "we need a military". You're also asking for a completely unbalanced mob rule government. How can you enforce any laws without an executive? How do you check the validity of laws and violations of them without courts? What are you going to do to provide for the millions of jobs lost when you shut down the federal government for a year, and the billions in revenue that state and local governments rely on from the federal government? And there's the problem that a complete democracy is going to give us the best government and the best policies. That people won't vote with little or no knowledge of short, mid and long term implications of decisions. That they wouldn't be swayed by emotional rhetoric and corporate spending. What are you going to do to provide for the millions of jobs lost when you shut down the federal government for a year, and the billions in revenue that state and local governments rely on from the federal government? Isn't this exactly what happened until Gingrich back down 16 years ago? I'm actually hoping that the GOP will overplay their hand and go for the jugular and it will backfire, because I've lost my confidence in Axelrod, Plouffe and Emanuel to deal with the messy day-to-day business of governance versus campaigning. President Obama went more than 18 months without making a major White House address on the biggest concern to most Americans, the economy, and specifically, their job/employment status. That will turn out to be the same level of mistake as the Clintons getting bogged down in Don't Ask, Don't Tell and health care reform their first two years in office. And it's going to take a lot more than H. Clinton as the VP replacing Biden in 2 years if the Republicans get their way in 2011 and 2012. The biggest problem is that I don't feel that the American people believe that the President actually cares about them...on an intellectual level, yes. But this is the single biggest issue going forward, to me...anyone can look at the banks, the stock market, etc., and see that many corporate executives have better lives and bigger bonuses than before, but almost no members of the middle class would say their lives are fundamentally better than they were in the 80's or 90's. I hope Obama can learn to have that political touch with everyday Americans that Clinton and GW Bush had...otherwise, he will end up in history more like GHW BUSH or Carter, unfortunately.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 08:33 AM) China's total revenues inbound are $157B, $77B or more (they say it may be more) are spent on the military. That means China is spending HALF its budget on its military. This is from your own article. Because they have almost ZERO taxation, almost no social safety net (in terms of health care or pensions/Social Security) to speak of...and invest much of their money into foreign reserves like USD and Japanese Yen in order to keep the level of RMB artificially lowered. When you compare per capita GNP, the US is still 10X-12X higher on average, something like $3800 USD in China and around $40,000 USD per person in America. So there's a huge income inequality between the middle class in both countries. The Chinese government is cash rich, but it saves and it also spends money on infrastructure and improvement projects we no longer even dream about. If you've ever been to Shanghai or Hong Kong or Beijing, it would be more apparent where that investment is going.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 08:23 AM) I see zero chance that thsi country becomes the next Russia. The dynamics are simply not at all the same. They are in fact entirely different, in almost every way. Perhaps the best example is a much larger version of Great Britain's empire slipping from where it was 100 years ago. OTOH, we don't want to sink down to the level Japan or Germany (although after China, they're probably example #1 of who we should be studying and emulating, certainly not Japan's stagflation for 20+ years)...not with China on the rise, and India and Brazil not far behind. And the German manufacturing base as well as infrastructure/public works/housing investments over the past 15-20 years have been immense as a percentage of budgetary outlays per capita in the US during that same time period.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 08:06 AM) You do realize that China has the largest standing military on earth, right? More men, more guns, more armor than any other country. And 98% of it is within the country's borders, so obviously it would be pretty insane to attack them. They spend immense amounts of money on their military, make no mistake. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/wor...hina/budget.htm China, $77.9 billion (USD) divided by 1.6 billion people=$50 USD per person US, $664 billion (USD) divided by 300,000,000 people=$2,213 USD per person Something like 19-20-21% of our annual Federal budget. The US alone spends 46.5% of the global defense budget of the entire world. China is a distant second at 6.6%. In other words, the US is still 7X higher in spending even though our population is 1/5th the size of China's. So really, to put it another way, we're spending 35X per person what they are. Or if you calculate it from the other statistic I used above, it's actually 44X the spending per person of China. France, UK and Russia make up 11.5%. The next ten countries combined are at 20.7%, and the rest of the world (roughly countries #16-200) at only 14.7%. http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/wor...litary-spending

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 08:01 AM) The Meandering Manifesto strikes again. You want only essential services and a 75% rule to pass anything, but you want to see a zillion solar panels and bullet trains? I'm at a loss for words. Just give me one good reason to believe that anything will change for the better in the US in the next two years besides luck, chance or "it simply has to." Once again, the 75% would slide down to 50% in the first 9 months, hardly an incredible barrier. And I don't remember a zillion solar panels anywhere in what I wrote. I do think if we challenged our carmakers to build 200 million battery-operated cars for under $20,000 (with the supporting infrastructure of recharging stations that would be critically important...as nobody wants to be an initial adopter until they see that a new technology will be sustained and adopted) by the year 2020 that it clearly could be done. Is there ANY hope at all that Congress will do this on their own? No, I'd say those odds are less than ZERO. What is your plan to keep our country from becoming the next Russia? Prayer?

QUOTE (G&T @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 07:44 AM) How are 300M people going to engage in an intelligent discussion about what to keep and what not to keep? Should we elect representatives to meet in a common location to discuss the issues and make recommendations on our behalf? EDIT: by this I mean that the TV idea makes no sense as it would take decades for every idiot to talk. Also, how can people make intelligent decision about topics like the FDIC within 24 hours? And I know I will feel safe while the US military is disbanded for an entire year. I think it's pretty clear that at least 75% of the people in America would agree with you and feel unsafe without some form of military. I live in China...they don't have a military empire all over the globe, yet you would be hard-pressed to find a single Chinese person afraid of attack at this point in time. Instead of military imperialism, they're practicing economic imperialism while watching the US bankrupt itself like Russia did trying to be the policeman for the entire globe. The t.v. idea obviously needs to be fine-tuned. One thing is for sure, whether it's 24 hours of debate or 240 hours or even 2,400, with the new Congress in January of 2011, nothing will be passed over the next two years and our country will sink further into irrelevancy. And you're making a big assumption that every person who came to Washington would be an "idiot." OTOH, I think we'd all be presently surprised to hear some of the thoughts and ideas of the "common people" because we already know what we're going to get from multi-millionaire lawyers. At the time of George Washington, people came to serve the country in a time of need with the idea they would go home as soon as possible. The last thing any Congressman today would ever want to institute is term limits upon themselves. Remember the Contract with America in 1994? Remember how quickly that idea died for the majority of those newly-elected into power that year?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 8, 2010 -> 07:32 AM) I don't have time to respond individually but let me put in the first word. I think this is nonsense. Half of the ideas here disagree with the other half. A 75% agreement requirement to pass anything would mean that there was no such thing as a government. None of your other ideas would ever happen with that requirement. A balanced budget in the middle of a depression makes the depression worse. Having the government decide where private institutions can spend their money isn't even something I'm interested in. Reaching out to enemies yet pulling back the entire U.S. military, that doesn't contradict? Becoming the world's greatest clean energy power...great...except we have no way to pay for it because you've killed off any means to do that. You really think that more than 25% of the people in the U.S. would keep Social Security checks from going out to those who are 60+? That 25% would say we should let all the Federal prison inmates go free or that all our national parks should be shuttered? The point is that NOTHING will happen in the next two years in Congress...this is the entire strategy for the GOP to win the presidency in 2012. It backfired when Newt Gingrich tried it in 1994-1995, and it would again in 2011. But the Obama administration hasn't been nearly as smart as the Clinton one in developing a triangulation strategy. There are MANY government programs that are good/solid/sound/effective and would have the approval of at least 75% of the American people. They're just not being sold or marketed well enough...which requires leadership. And the 75% would gradually slide down to a 50% requirement...I think you didn't read that part. It's possible to have a balanced budget and still have an expanding/growing economy...of course, it couldn't be balanced in the first 2-3 years, but President Clinton showed it's not impossible to do for 3 years. What will undoubtedly happen is that an austerity-driven, scare-mongering Congress will be able to get the American people to buy into cutting the deficit when the GOP managed to destroy it under Bush with two wars, tax cuts and an unfunded Medicare prescription supplement. And government should never decide or dictate where private enterprise should spend its money...not sure where you got that idea. The people themselves would decide by their votes. As far as the foreign policy question...on the surface, it might seem a contradiction, that we're demonstrating weakness and inviting another terrorist attack. I beg to differ, because 80-90% of the motivation to attack us comes from presence around the world. There's no reason that we should let the rest of the world get a free ride on this issue, especially China. We're spending something like the same amount on defense as the Top 2-10 or even 20 countries do combined. It's simply not sustainable. Pride cometh before the fall...we should have learned that lesson in Vietnam forty years ago, or from studying the Russian war in Afghanistan in the 80's. In order to have ANYTHING we want, we'd simply have to agree on what amount in taxes we're collectively willing to pay for it.

A day or so ago, I saw in the news an interesting blurb...the "Naked Cowboy" was throwing his name in the ring for the 2012 Presidential race. Immediately, I thought things couldn't get much worse, until I saw a video on-line with him speaking about his "platform." America was once a great country, but somewhere around 9/11, we forgot what made us so strong. Today, the Tea Party's rise symbolizes the disillusionment many feel, yet they only offer a laundry list of problems without providing any real solutions. To me, the answer is really quite simple. Power must return to the American people in the form of a Peoples' Congress for 2011. Beginning on January 1st, 2011, we ask the entire Congress, the President and the Supreme Court to step aside for one full calendar year before returning to power in 2012. Every aspect of the Federal government will close on that day. Why? So we can determine for ourselves the functions of government which we can't live without. While the Federal government will shut down and tax rates will revert to 0 on a national scale, local/county/state services will all remain open, such as schools and vital functions such as hospitals, police, fire department and sanitation/water. That will leave decisions on what we want to keep to us. For example, Federal prisons and Guantanamo Bay, Headstart or Border Patrol. Can these programs be run more cost-efficiently AND more safely by private enterprise and/or public-private partnerships? Or national parks, the FAA and air traffic controllers, Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, the US Mint, Environmental Protection Agency, Social Security Administration, Medicare, National Defense (Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines/Coast Guard), FDIC/FSLIC, foreign aid, the prescription drug benefit, etc. In order to truly appreciate what we now have, we must understand what it's like to miss it. In the process of going through the Federal budget on a "line item" basis, all Americans would learn an important lesson in civics and citizenship as the news media was finally forced to cover substantive policy issues in depth as opposed to superficial 8 second sound bites and "horse race" polling numbers. Now how would this Peoples' Congress thing work? Over the first three months of 2011, it would require a 75% consensus/majority to put anything back into the Federal budget, as well as agreement on how much it would cost (this would come from the Congressional OMB office working in concert with a blue ribbon commission of economics experts on both sides of the political spectrum) and, most importantly, how to pay for it. Think of the movie "Dave" here. Each and every American would be welcome to come to the US Capitol and present their ideas and opinion (carried live on CSPAN) on a given issue for 10 minutes. After 24 hours of debate, an up or down (yay or nay) vote would be held, requiring either 75% of states (38) OR 75% of Congressional districts for passage. At the six month mark (in 2011), the minimum threshold for passage would fall to 2/3rds and finally to only 50% + 1 after 9 months. (As the nation of American Idol, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google and Microsoft, we can certainly figure out a voting system that combines landlines, cell phones and computers that can't be gamed!) On a personal basis, after spending the last week in Tibet, two things really struck me. One was the sheer insanity of climbing Mount Everest (Qomolagma is the native word). The other was the ubiquitous presence of solar panels saturating the region. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times immediately came to mind. We have to dream big again. Sir Edmund Hillary did. After all, we won two World Wars, beat the Great Depression, put a man on the moon, pioneered nuclear technology....so why can't America now lead the world in battery/electric cars, wind turbines, solar power and magnetic levitation trains that can surpass 200 MPH? Where once we produced things, now we've gotten fat eating too many Big Macs and SuperSize Cokes while descending into a country of lawyers, financial services and strip malls. Yet we can still determine our collective destiny. It's not too late. Through the Peoples' Congress, we can tackle the big and pressing issues that have become unsolvable due to partisan politics, PAC's, gridlock and lobbying over the last 30 years. Finally, in order for our democracy to once again be viewed as a shining light on the top of world again, we must do the following: 1) Pay off our entire debt to China. 2) Become the world's foremost expert in "green technology" and lead China and India into the future by example. 3) Find the strongest examples of local school reforms and replicate the strategies that work well, incorporating the best ideas of both public and charter school leaders such as Thomas Bloch in Kansas City and Geoffrey Canada in Harlem. 4) Bring back ALL our troops and put them to work in the US rebuilding our most critical infrastructure while simultaneously addressing the future through our "green technology" program implementation. 5) Remind the world that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are two bedrock principles that will not perish. We must reach each out to our enemies with renewed dedication, persistence and patience, from Osama bin Laden to North Korea, from Iran to Venezuela. 6) Martin Luther King, Jr., said "everyone can be great because everyone can serve." A new GI Bill. In return, every American would be required to provide 18 months of service and shared sacrifice between the ages of 18-26. This would be done through volunteer organizations, the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps/USA Freedom Corps, working on projects to rebuild our crumbling dams, bridges, highways and schools or military service/training in defending our country. 7) Most importantly, find/develop/create work and training/retraining opportunities for all of our currently unemployed or underemployed Americans, through innovative and dynamic public and private sector partnerships. Every unemployed American could post their resumes and small business ideas at KIVA.ORG. Banks would be encouraged to lend again to get the economy producing jobs again, from microfinance (see Nobel Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus' Grameen Bank idea from Bangladesh) to reopening shuttered Rust Belt factories to produce the next generation of battery-operated cars, solar panels, wind turbines and bullet trains. 8) A balanced budget. There's no reason why the government in Washington shouldn't be held to the same standard we all must live by in our individual households. 9) Worldwide competitive "research and development" grants from the Bill Gates/Warren Buffett Foundations, supplemented by monies provided by the Peoples' Congress. 10) An exciting and fun new nationwide physical fitness program to be designed and implemented for all U.S. K-12 students. It's not acceptable for 1/3rd of young people in our country to be overweight...and it will end up costing billions of dollars in health care outlays that are 100% avoidable. To me, America's greatest strengths are its creativity, diversity and freedoms. No other country in the world can match us in those three areas. Just like the best and brightest in our 234 year old history, we all can help to restore the American dream that our parents and grandparents fought so hard for...we don't have to be the first generation to be worse off than the preceding one. So instead of fearing the rest of the world, of pointing the finger at China or Muslims, illegal immigrants and globalization, we must learn to embrace the challenges of the future and the opportunities to lead which are wide open to all of us if we can only learn to use our imaginations and dream big again. I know the Founding Fathers would approve. After all, the Tea Party is just a Pity Party...we're all better than that.

The trouble was that they seemed to be waiting for the Yankees to hand them an opening as opposed to the Twins creating their own opportunities. Why wouldn't the Twins be thinking that after all that is what Chicago had provided them much of the year in virtually every big game they played. The Yankees are hardly the White Sox. They don't give teams those chances in the playoffs. The Yankee's have scored 8 runs in the later innings compared to 2 for the Twins. You don't need to look any farther then that. It is perfectly appropriate to challenge that culture of waiting patiently for the Yankees make a mistake. Teams that take that approach are not going to advance in the playoffs. from startribune.com message board I also read somewhere that the Twins have something approaching a sub .200 record after clinching their 6 AL Central division championships...so a lot of fingers are being pointed at Gardenhire now for letting the foot off the pedal and playing their Rochester roster instead of flying into the post-season with momentum. I don't think you'll ever again see the Twins having a clinching champagne celebration until they actually win another post-season series. And lots of questions why the Pohlad family didn't have the cajones to bring in Cliff Lee as their "proven" #1 starter when they were rolling in positive cash flow and the Rangers and Hicks were technically bankrupt. Many Twins' fans also feel they have no leaders on the team (see 2005 Sox examples like Rowand, Everett, AJ and Crede)...that this has been something lacking on the team since Hunter left and arguably Puckett/Hrbek/Morris/Gladden/Gaetti, etc.

QUOTE (Real @ Oct 6, 2010 -> 09:12 PM) Gardenhire gets horribly outmanaged in another post season series? Shocker. Crain has been their best set-up guy all season long. He simply didn't get the job done...story of White Sox relievers for about 6 weeks in the second half. It's easy to second-guess and say that they could or should have used Fuentes there, but that would be hyper micro-managing. It will be interesting to see how Pavano and Duensing handle the pressure of the post-season.

It's going to be the ultimate match-up for Pavano if the Yanks hold off the Twins and take the 1-0 lead. This series has gone from looking like a sweep for the Twins to the reverse in the span of 30 minutes or so...with all the momentum shifting. When it comes down to it, I really can't root for the Twins though. About the only reason I'd like to see them win is for Thome, but it now feels like Philly is going to mow down every team this post-season. Swisher, Thome, Logan, Javy, Guerrier...quite a few former Sox players involved in this series.