biggentleben

Even Klobuchar?

I really like what I've seen so far. Brandon Roy hasn't been mentioned, but I've liked what I've seen of him as well. The Timberwolves raised a lot of eyebrows going after guys like AK47 and Roy, and there's significant risk, but if they get 55-65 games out of each, they will be in great shape.

I really don't believe Clinton was a moderate at all. Not in his personal beliefs, anyway. He was, however, one of the last people in Washington - in the White House or the Capitol Building - willing to negotiate his own personal beliefs in order to make progress he felt was for the good of all. His willingness to reach across the aisle in his first couple of years when his own party was setting up an us-against-them mentality was why the "Contract With America" Republicans were so willing to work with him. A great example is the Tom Daschle of Clinton's era vs. the Tom Daschle that was forced to exist in Bush's presidency. Daschle is a moderate Democrat at his core beliefs, but he was forced to be the "anti" voice in public because his party had chosen to return to partisan politics after the Bush/Gore debacle of an election. Do welfare and entitlement programs need an overhaul? Absolutely! The issue is that no one comes to the middle and says "what is working and what isn't". The right comes in saying, "Scrap the whole thing!" The left comes in saying, "There are too many people who would be hurt if we completely lost this help!" Neither side is willing to come in and make sacrifices. Heck, we're in the midst of a recession. I've not had a raise since I started this job 4 years ago. In that time, Congress has increased their pay nearly 150% once you include in travel costs and room and board. That's out of touch with America, both sides of the aisle. I look at South Dakota as a great example. Kristi Noem may be the dumbest congressperson ever sent to Washington, and her entire platform is anti-Obama and anti-Pelosi, but it rallies a state right now that's sick of the crap going on in DC. Problem is, she's contributing as much as she's helping, and she can't really be attacked on her incredible absentee record and lack of education because she left school to be a mom and she's used her kids as an excuse to leave DC instead of attend committee meetings she should be a part of. No one wants to attack a mom for spending time with her kids, but this is exactly why we have the issue we do. Someone who obviously isn't willing to put in the time to do the job required is kept in office and getting pay raises while her constituents pay for higher priced items with stagnant and even lower wages (SD has an incredibly low unemployment rate, so it's hard to argue the "out of work" angle). This kind of crap representation is rampant in DC right now, and it's why nothing will happen with either presidential candidate to really change our current issues in this country.

Honestly, this is one that I haven't looked into because it was so universally destroyed by a teaching friend of mine who has had some positive ideas on merit pay. When she bashed it completely, I didn't even invest my time in learning more about it. Not the best voting research, I know, but I trust her reaction that strongly. I believe the measure is 16. 14-15-16 are the three that are fairly news worthy in SoDak. Referred Law 14 would utilize excise tax funds specifically to fund "large project development', which would encourage wind farms in the state, but it would also encourage corporate farm entities to establish in the state, so it has some strong argument back and forth in an agricultural state. Referred Law 16 would eliminate teacher tenure requirements, set up a teacher and administration evaluation standard which would then set merit based bonuses based on those evaluations. Initiated Measure 15 would increase the state sales tax from 4% to 5%, and permanently utilize that last percentage to fund education and Medicaid. Those are the big three here.

South Dakota has some interesting ballot measures, and a moron sitting representative that should be voted out, but she's not got a decent opponent to do it. One ballot measure would bring about merit pay for educators, and another would utilize a permanent tax to fund education and Medicaid.

The star of arguably the greatest bean brawl in MLB history: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=5955859

This. I think when I make the comment that the winners of the World Series are a tournament winner and not the "best" team in baseball, there are those that think I'm saying they're unworthy winners. That's not the case at all. There is a lot of luck/goofy hops/short series stuff that can mean one team gets breaks that another doesn't. What I've been saying all along here is simply winning in the postseason does not determine who is the better overall team. There is not a balanced schedule within baseball. The team that wins the most games in just the team that won the most games. There will never be a way to determine what team is the best as no roster is static. A team adds to through trades and player development, they lose through injury and fatigue. You can find excuses for losing in the post season and say your team was the better team, but it does not change the fact your team for a week was not the better team. So I suppose you would say that the Tigers didn't underachieve this year? Based on preseason expected wins, the Tigers were about 15 games worse than predicted, yet they're in the world series. Two teams had better records while playing in tougher divisions and missed the playoffs, so your "balanced schedule" argument holds no weight there. I would say that the Reds had a better season relative to expectations than the Tigers, yet they didn't get out of the first round of the playoffs. Regardless, you're once again completely missing my point and hanging on one or two words. Not worth taking any further.

This. I think when I make the comment that the winners of the World Series are a tournament winner and not the "best" team in baseball, there are those that think I'm saying they're unworthy winners. That's not the case at all. There is a lot of luck/goofy hops/short series stuff that can mean one team gets breaks that another doesn't. What I've been saying all along here is simply winning in the postseason does not determine who is the better overall team.

Cincy had the best combination. They had the league's best bullpen and comparable starters. Cueto-Latos-Bailey were absolutely comparable to Cain-Bum-Vogelsong. And the bullpen was a clear Cincy advantage. When Cueto went down it hurt, but what might have happened if St. Louis didn't beat a superior Washington pitching staff? I could easily point to multiple teams from the last few years that won over superior pitching teams. Not to mention your Atlanta example back when they used to say "pitching gets you to the postseason, hitting wins it" By pure pitchers, Cincy was better, but Bochy is an exceptional bullpen manager, which to me overcomes the minimal difference in talent between the two.

When you look at overall pitching staff for the regular season, you miss a lot. Brandon Beachy wasn't walking onto the Braves roster, Strasburg wasn't walking onto the Nats roster. In playoff rosters, the Giants had the best combination of starters and bullpen arms of any team in the NL. What's stepped up drastically for the Giants was their defense once they got Belt in at first and Blanco in left.

Did you even look at anything before you posted this? Talk about meaningless: Cueto has a chance to be the NL Cy Young. (Which he did, BTW, in a much worse home park for pitching than anyone on SF) Latos and Bailey were pretty comparable with Vogelsong and Bumgartner too. Zimmerman and Gio are both outstanding pitchers. The Cincy bullpen was ridiculous in the regular season. All that and the fact that SF's fifth starter most of the season (Barry Zito) has pitched well in two key games. I could keep going with this post but I've put more time, effort, and thought into than you earned with that retort. Yeesh. How many innings did Cueto and Strasburg through this postseason? Not that I disagree with you neccesarily, I think luck is obviously a huge factor. SF is lucky that their rotation remained healthy, and I as all those teams have pretty great frontline SP, which is the most important factor. I guess I don't count Lincecum this year as he hasn't been in the rotation all year. He never mentioned Strasburg. He mentioned Gio and Zimmerman from the Nats, both guys who made 32 starts. Neither completed 200 innings, but both were over 190. Cueto led the league in starts this year and threw nearly 220 innings, but he was injured in the postseason. Lincecum also never left the rotation, tying Cueto for the lead league in games started, though he only tossed 186 innings in the same amount of starts. Just some facts for your argument, some you stated correctly, some not.

Um, it's not like they're doing this with unknowns. They have employed guys for their strengths, and their roster is full of guys who have been miscast by previous teams, but they are certainly not unknown commodities.

1) Comparing pitcher wins and team wins does not work. At all. 2) No one is saying that it is always true that the best record = best team, but it is pretty alarming the change in correlation from pre-divisional play in the 60s and since. The best team by record before 1961 tended to win the World Series an awful lot. Now, with each added round of playoffs, the correlation is much, much lower. The fact that more wild card teams have appeared in the World Series since 1995 than teams with the best regular season record is also fairly indicative that a WS win is not truly indicative of being the best team in baseball in that particular season. It's winning a postseason tournament. The team that won 106 games but got beat by the team that won 86 and got hot in October had to endure all the ups and downs of the same 162 game season and won 20 games more, yet they're bypassed in the eyes of many who have a distorted view of the value of the World Series by that team who had 20 less wins. I'm not sure how to truly measure the "best team" in the game, but the assumption that it's the World Series winner every year is just not true.

I agree. That's why I cannot stand the extremism of both sides. Either all in or all out.

It is a crap shoot. If you really believe the best team is the one that wins the World Series, you're simply missing baseball. For that to be true, the Angels would be in the playoffs this year while the Tigers were watching. Instead, the Tigers are in the World Series while the Angels weren't even in the playoffs. The correlation prior to divisional play to the best record in the league to the World Series winner was high, and now it's virtually nil. The best team by record virtually never wins the World Series anymore. Now you can say that unbalanced schedule influences record or other such things, but we've seen more wild card teams win the World Series since 1995 than teams with the MLB's best record. If that isn't a crap shoot, I'm not sure what you consider a crap shoot to be.

Imo, it's not a crap shoot at all. The teams that win nearly always have the best pitching. Pitching for the most part doesn't slump. Like we saw with the Yankees even very good hitting teams can slump in a short series. Unless you have very good pitching getting to the world series takes a lot of luck. With 3 series instead of two now I think luck will have a much harder time holding up. In 87 the Twins were lucky. They got the Tigers after they had a draining season ending run to make it. Then they got the Cards with several injuries to key guys. 91 they were a very good team and had very good starting pitching in Morris, Erickson and Tapani. If pitching were your answer, the Braves would have a half dozen World Championships or more with Smoltz, Glavine, Maddux, Avery/Neagle/Ashby/Millwood. In the wild card system, it truly is a crap shoot. A team can get hot for a short period of time. A bullpen can dominate a series (and the Giants have one of the best in the game right now). One hitter can swing a whole series. In general, it's rare to see 8 runs in a postseason game even in the height of offensive era in the early 2000s because teams with great pitching were the ones that could endure the regular season, but pitching streaks just like hitting. If you were going on pure talent in the rotation and bullpen, the Braves should have gone farther this year and the Nationals would be in the World Series. A one-game play in game and a five-game series make anything possible with one or two poor starts in a rotation turn.

You make an excellent point. It seems to me that the biggest welfare queens in the U.S. are Wall Street (hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts) and the big corporations ((hundreds of billions of dollars of tax breaks). And without government funding, private enterprise never would have been able to develop computers or the internet. I actually wasn't talking about any corporate handouts. Both Romney and Ryan's families received welfare assistance when they were boys. Without that assistance, who knows if they're in this spot today. Yet they want to remove that assistance for others to reach their "lofty" seats at the table.

I did not realize that. Rodney had an unusually good year but "comeback?" That seems odd. We discussed it in one of the awards threads that Posey and Rodney had the narrative going, but Rios is by far the biggest comeback guy this year in the AL, and Martin Prado in the NL, going on fWAR.

Dunn wan TSN's CPY trophy, not the MLB award. Those awards went to Fernando Rodney and Buster Posey.

The best part is for their disdain for what they deem as "handouts", both Romney's and Ryan's families received government assistance to be able to make their foothold in this country, yet they now demonize those who want to do the same exact thing.

George McGovern passed away

Woah, woah, woah! TWO hot chicks?! No way we should give up the second hot chick to bring him in. Maybe a 9 and a 6 along with a bag of balls, but Andrus is nowhere near worth 2 10's. Why don't we just trade away Mauer and eat his entire contract as well while we're at it if we're going crazy talk with two 10's.

Two reasons this Vikings team is doing much better: DRASTICALLY improved line play across the entire offensive line, and much better interior line play on defense. Build from the inside out, and it can help. Kalil was a great pick, Sullivan has taken his lumps, but he's moving quickly to an All Pro level at center, and the rest of the line is quite solid. Kevin Williams' play has been great, but it's been Guion, Ballard, Evans, and Griffen (in pass rush situations) who have made a huge difference to make the defense look that much better.

Typical Dave decompensation rant. Once proven incorrect and unable to sway just by overly repeating the same incorrect argument, he'll decompensate to cursing and then threatening. Lovely.