ashbury

The two guys who left Verlander off their ballots are both from the Tampa Bay chapter of the BBWAA. I wonder what the source of bad blood was.

Do they have pie a la mode?

FWIW, I find Drunk History fine in its small 30-minute doses. As one-trick ponies go, it's a very good trick, but I can't imagine binge watching it

But that is precisely what the jury is still out on, about him. And until he proves it one way or the other you need to keep Gordon in the picture as a SS. These things will sort themselves out, if not rushed.

It's like you read my resume, or something Johnny von Neumann made some fundamental contributions in understanding seeming paradoxes that a truly free market can have, and helped launch the math that underlies how they can be analyzed. I'm not sure he put together an all-encompassing economic theory that gets down into tax policy, remedies for collusion, outside governmental forces, etc. His best work applies to well-structured problems, IMO - you can't run a linear program every time it's time to collect taxes. As a baseball aside, I think that if I were running a team, any candidate for head of the analytics department had better not have an "Aleppo moment" when I casually mention JvN during the job inteview. "If you had a chance to bring John von Neumann onto your group of analysts, would you do it?"

While I found many things to disagree with in your flurry of messages this morning, which I won't take time to belabor, we're in sync on this one. Most of what gets spoken economically is basically recycled Adam Smith, and his world of small shopkeepers and blacksmiths, whose economic reach was basically how far they could walk, is gone. I just want to clarify whether you equate capitalism with free enterprise. To me, free enterprise is a general principle that the law of supply and demand is all that you need. Capitalism is best exemplified by the TV show Shark Tank, where those already holding large amounts of capital decide which ideas are given a try and which ones wither on the vine for lack of funding. I majored in Physics, so I was very influenced by learning about Relativistic Physics, which reduces to the normal case of Newtonian Physics (apples falling from trees, etc) when velocities are low, but produces surprising results that have been empirically validated when you start traveling really really fast. I want a similar kind of economic theory. One that reduces to Adam Smith when you have a low velocity economy where pretty much everyone has to work all the time just to provide the necessities of life, but shows the way for a society we want to live in when the world is interconnected and abundance has started to look sustainable for the time being. The laws of supply and demand don't go away, and indeed are a great motivating force when scarcity is a fact of daily life; but it turns into Winner Take All in an interconnected world, and to still have poverty as a result seems dumb when overall there is abundance.

That is the lesson I'm taking from this presidential election too, and I don't think it involves very much change in the platform, only the messaging. Hillary's Deplorables crack was deplorable for the way she didn't own up to it and explain it afterward (full-throatedly and for the rest of the campaign) so that Middle America understood she wasn't giving the finger to them, but begging them not to lie down with the dogs so they don't get up with fleas.

The Hillary Democrats are calibrated well enough* on their economics to win an election IMO. As for the second paragraph quoted, I plan to vote for McGovern in 2020, by whatever name he or she is nominated, just like I voted for Ms. Humphrey this year. I just don't think enough of my fellow citizens will join me, to prevent a landslide that compounds the disaster of 2016. * Well, nobody including myself has what I consider a working economic philosophy that confronts the late 20th Century state of relative abundance and massive global leveraging we continue to be in, while still serving to illuminate Adam Smith style economics in times of scarcity, so my comment is modulo that

This top-ten list... if they develop according to the way they are projected, and with no big surprises on the upside... then supplemented with role players for the rest of a 25-man... doesn't look like a pennant winner to me, like our prospect lists from a few years ago did.

I was shocked when it came away empty at the Academy Awards. I don't think it was even nominated in most categories.

I'm almost tired of the Sanders tangent, but not quite. Ran across this quote from Steve Bannon, the Breitbart guy who shaped Trump's strategy and whose views should be give some credence: "“This is not the French Revolution,” says Bannon. “They destroyed the basic institutions of their society and changed their form of government. What Trump represents is a restoration—a restoration of true American capitalism and a revolution against state-sponsored socialism. Elites have taken all the upside for themselves and pushed the downside to the working- and middle-class Americans.” IMO he laid out there the message they would have used against Sanders, even more heavily than they did against Clinton. It would have worked no less well, probably better. I'm going to start posting this link in response to some of my Bernie bro Facebook friends. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/trump-s-data-team-saw-a-different-america-and-they-were-right

I don't see what instruction it gives. If you are saying the green foretells the losses in Michigan and West Consin, then why doesn't the yellow foretell wins that were seemingly in reach for Clinton in Flada and No' Ca'lina*? Or, conversely, why doesn't green foretell bad results in Washington and Oregon, while yellow does foretell Virginia being pretty much as solid as expected? * My brother used to like to joke that NC residents pronounced the name of their state as approximately three syllables in all, while they (or at least their preachers) pronounce the word God with about five. Of course, they would remind him, "no, we don't talk funny, y'all do."

Not to worry. We'll nail your feet to the perch.

It's not the posters here who would have grossly mischaracterized Bernie's views. Trump would have done the honors. He had this knack for summarizing his opponents for President with a few choice words. Low Energy Jeb, Lyin' Ted , Little Marco. Replace "Crooked Hillary Clinton" with "Socialist Bernie Sanders" at the beginning of every sentence of his stump speech, and you quickly would have had an electorate who could not, when alone in that voting booth with their conscience and their childhood upbringing, bring themselves to pick the Socialist among two anti-establishment candidates. It would have been a McGovern-style landslide. And since I see several parallels between this year's election and 1968, I will not be surprised to see exactly such a 1972 outcome in 2020.

The house, perhaps, as it's always up for grabs. But take a look at the roster of Senate seats up for election in 2018, near the bottom of the following web page, and think again about what combination of events would have to take place for Democrats to take control before 2020, defending 25 seats (including the two that caucus with them) and having only 8 to go after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classes_of_United_States_Senators Things would have to have turned so sour for the nation that I don't think I really want to go through the experience.

Why? I mean, beyond the need to have a warm body to chuck the ball to Garver 100+ times a game so he continues to develop behind the plate.

Something I'll probably leave to others to keep an eye on.

Plan A showing Hughes in a rotation spot is an exercise in wishful thinking, IMO.

Moderator's suggestion: take this tangent to the About MinnCentric forum if it needs to be explored further.

I tell ya, ladies and gentlemen, this left fielder gets no respect. No respect at all. http://www.drcirceo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/image.jpg (For the record, I don't like Robbie's defense either.)

It's not a symmetric playing field, somehow. The Democrats will be punished for such obstruction. The Republicans 2011-2016 never were.

Correct. We haven't seen the culmination yet. 2020 or 2024 will bring a more conventional fascist.

My favorite thing on nights the Dems are winning is to turn to Fox News and watch the bitter tears. Turnabout fair play here tonight.

How about a synthesis of the two factors? Her wisecrack to donors about "basket of deplorables" may be what ultimately did her in, because she didn't take Bobby Kennedy's dictum to heart that you should “hang a lantern on your problem.” Everyone mis-speaks during a campaign at some point - she should have clarified over and over and over for the rest of the campaign exactly what groups she meant when she said it. The Trump campaign succeeded in recasting the gaffe as "she means YOU." Her campiagn was so risk-averse that they didn't spot this meta-risk. The perception of condescension that these hillbillies feel is pretty hard to dispel.

Unlikely. Florida is gone. Ohio is gone. It's a disaster for Clinton because even if she squeaks through, there will be no mandate, and she'll face a validated and emboldened opposition in both houses of Congress.