biggentleben

I didn't call YOU extreme. I said your response was extreme. You know, the response that did call ME a murderer. It's a point of intelligent debate - being able to understand the other side enough to actually respect their position. You want to discuss the points made within a discussion, we can have that discussion. Flinging crap along the lines of the monkeys is not going to allow anyone to come to any semblance of an understanding, and frankly, that's exactly what we're all suffering from in the political landscape. These political posts have been tremendous up to this point on this forum because of the respectful discourse that has occurred. I ask, on behalf of those others here, for you to please either choose to enter into these discussions in a respectful manner or exhibit that same respect and stay out of them.

Just a note that it is quoted in my post, so you may need to remove it, though that would make the initial response of my post to sound awkward, but I understand if that would like to be completely removed. Thank you for your comment on the post as well.

As was stated above, this is an extreme and reactionary response. I don't by any means support murder on a black and white basis. I don't support rape on a black and white basis. I don't support incest in any way on a black and white basis. Then you find lots and lots of gray in the middle of all those issues. I will openly admit that I'm not sure I could give a blanket statement on abortion. I am in classes to be certified as a foster parent, I worked in youth ministry, and my current job is in adult mental health. I've seen so many different angles on this issue. I had to counsel parents who forced a college-aged daughter who was raped to take the baby to term, and the continued presence of that child inside of her for 8 months was a constant and continuous reminder of what could have been a one-night, one-time incident to work through in counseling. She was someone who suffered from depression and had actively utilized medication and counseling to treat her depression from the time she was 14. Instead, she had an incredibly difficult pregnancy (where she was unable to take her mental health medications due to negative effects to the baby) and tragically in the end, she committed suicide, effectively killing herself and her unborn child. I will tell you that those parents will tell you that abortion is a lot more gray to them than it once was. I've worked with a teenager who was sexually molested and abused by a cousin until she became pregnant. This teenager was too far along in her pregnancy before getting the pregnancy confirmed to have even sought an abortion, and she carried the child to term. She put the child up for adoption, but (possibly due to the incestual nature of his conception) her child was developmentally disabled, and the child was nearly 2 years old before he was adopted. That said, I had a couple friend of mine seek my advice. They found through prenatal testing that their child was going to be born with down syndrome. They are a very well-to-do young family, and this would be their third child, but it was absolutely a planned pregnancy. They came to me to ask my opinion on the option of terminating the pregnancy early. In that case, I was personally heavily against the abortion. Their son was born without down syndrome as the test was incorrect, and they would have terminated that child unnecessarily. All three of those cases would be an absolute no for someone who is hard-line black and white anti-abortion (I refuse to consider someone against abortion "pro life" when there is an extremely high correlation for those who are anti-abortion and those who are pro-international military aggressiveness, but that's a whole other discussion). For me, there was only one I could be absolutely against, and the first two depended on the person and case involved. I want to move the discussion beyond this one issue, so that will be the last I'll post on the topic of abortion, however, using this as an example, there is so little at all in life that is black and white. There is room for intelligent, researched, respectful discussion on nearly all of these issues, but all too often, the options we are presented in elections pander to black and white, and that preaches to the extremes and is removed from the reality of life. So you can base your opinions, I'm a registered independent. I've never voted a straight-line party ticket (and I never intend to intentionally). In our local elections, we have three representative in the state-wide government. In the last election, I voted for two Republicans and one Democrat, not because of party affiliation, but because I knew the people and what they personally stood for and that they would be able to work across a party line on an issue. I'm a very strong Christian, having attended a year of seminary at a point in my life before pursuing social work rather than full-time ministry for myriad reasons that are not significant to this board. I grew up on a farm in a rural area, but I've lived in downtown Minneapolis and also in the suburbs of the Twin Cities in my life, so I've had an opportunity to experience different lifestyle experiences as well. Considering my position on a topic is not something that you can put into a box based on any aspect of boxes I check on a piece of paper, so I ask anyone in this conversation to expect that others' positions are not completely boxed on one issue based on their opinion on another issue. Now, back to the discussion on the insanity of Trump and whether any of the GOP candidates can reach across the center line to attract centrist voters in the 2016 election.

In that one election, sure. I will say that Romney was more centric than basically anyone in the current Republican grouping, so there was more of an opportunity to grab those centrist religious voters.

Usually smaller brands have a ton more flavor, but on the more national brands, I'd say that for floats, A&W is best, for drinking alone, I prefer Barq's.

Interestingly, I just found a recipe that I won a recipe adaption contest for when I was in middle school and part of 4-H. I removed large portions of margarine and all added sugar in a brownie recipe and added zucchini that has been ground to a mush. The brownies had more of a dark chocolate flavor, but the flavor was quite intense, and you never knew there was zucchini in there from the flavor or texture. The recipe got lost for years after I made that and my mom just found it. I noticed my wife brought home some zucchini, so I may decide that brownies make a good dessert this weekend!

To amend this, I'd state that their Christian base is really the extremist evangelical Christian. The farther center you get from that, the less party identification you find within the church. Heck, even in rural South Dakota, the church-going populace is rarely 50% Republican, and that's in a state where the Republican party has a strong foot hold.

Thank you for absolutely illustrating the point. I won't speak to exactly what Levi's intent with the comment was, but the topics he mentioned are issues that much of this generation have come to see as having multiple shades of gray, no real black or white, however primarily Republicans are hammering a black or white response to those questions, which is why the party is losing ground so heavily in the 18-40 market, with many choosing to register third party or independent and vote their favorite candidate, not just a party line. A candidate steps to the mic and is asked, "Do you believe in abortion?" He/she responds with "it depends" and is ripped mercilessly as a baby killer by Faux News. However, I would respect any candidate with a response like that much more than anyone on either side saying, "Abortion good!" or "Abortion bad!" blindly.

Objective historians have already called Obama's second term one of the most productive presidential terms in the last 50 years on a domestic and global scale. It's truly the extremist right wingers who even debate that his presidency has been productive at this point.

The towel waving (mods feel free to embed as I am not good at such things on mobile): Towel waving AJ

Shame that a guy who has such a good approach to a pretty controversial topic is dealing with a fairly serious injury currently. While he and I are about exact opposite in our belief systems, I have incredible respect for someone who is able to remove prior Christian bashings, talk-downs, or bias in order to have an open and honest discussion as I have worked to do with many friends who are of different faiths or are not believers.

His towel-waving to celebrate the win on Monday night was pretty legendary. There are a ton of GIFs already put together in Braves country highlighting his jubilation in that moment.

The Braves loved Olivera in the offseason, but they couldn't afford to beat the Dodgers in the bidding. In the end, they got the player for less than they bid by having the Dodgers pay the entire signing bonus. Wood has some huge injury issues, and he's spent each of the last two offseasons with an elbow balking that's already been repaired once, and I believe after Beachy/Medlen, the team was worried they'd lose out on Wood's value if they didn't move now.

More than anything, moves by Toronto and Kansas City this trade deadline showed what an astute front office can do when they see the whole depth of their window and make moves to maximize performance in that window, knowing there could be rebuilding to come. That's really the model that small/mid-market teams should follow.

Price is a FA after this season, sure. So is the 42 year-old Hawkins and retread Lowe, both of whom are there for one season due to injury and maturity of their high-end bullpen options that can easily take over in 2016. Revere has his first arby season this year and isn't eligible for free agency until 2018. Tulowitzki is signed through 2021 Like I mentioned before, they traded value, certainly, but their system is certainly not barren after all this. Heck, I'd still put it as a top half system in baseball even after all of these deals (then again, I'm a huge fan of both Alford and Reid-Foley). Toronto very likely made one of the most impressive "all-in" moves in recent baseball history. It cost Oakland a power hitter in his prime and a top 5 prospect in all of baseball to go all in last year. Toronto gave nothing like that up in their move.

You didn't know Obama before he ran? He had two NY Times best selling politically-based books before he was officially a presidential candidate. Certainly folks knew his name.

Sane is not a shared opinion here due to personal interaction with the woman. I'd never, ever vote for her if I had the option.

The interesting part is that depending on who you talk with, they were able to keep their top prospect in house (Daniel Norris was eliminated from most midseason prospect lists, just to temper this), Anthony Alford/Max Pentecost/Sean Reid-Foley. Hoffman was in that group, but not certainly at the top of it, and Norris would have topped it if considered (though he and Pompey would be 1/1a). Their system took a hit to the depth, but there's still a TON of upside players in the Blue Jays system, even after going big in this deadline.

Tremendous deal for the Brewers. I really like Hader and Santana.

Doug Melvin said he nixed the deal over Wheeler, Rosenthal said it was over Gomez. This was a weird one.

Rangers made out very well, but this is better than the Phillies were expected to do as well. Lots of volatility in the guys they got, even with Harrison, whose back may never let him be a full-time starter again, but this is what you have to do when Amaro has drug his feet for so long. Crazy that the Rangers pulled off Hamels and didn't have to include Gallo or Mazara.

Yeah, I didn't mean that Vaughn was ruining good material or anything, but he's a guy who simply cannot sell even average material, so the ****ty writing plus him playing the role really sticks out like a sore thumb. Vaughn can do some things well, but drama in general is his worst genre, so casting him as a main character was a poor choice. Absolutely agree than Woody and Shirtless sold the hell out of last season.

"Man, I have a lot of really crappy red fabric." "Huh, well I have a lot of really crappy blue fabric." "Want to swap some red for blue?" "Sure"

August waiver deals have been more prominent since the inception of the wild card. In my lifetime, I believe the biggest waiver deal pre-wild card was the Doyle Alexander for John Smoltz swap. Jeff Bagwell was also acquired through a waiver deal for Larry Anderson. Outside of that, there's not a whole lot, and both of those deals were more famous for the prospect involved than the guy that required passing through waivers.

Or with pretty much anyone but him playing the role...