TheLeviathan

Well said laloesch.

The Jays are pretty desperate for starting pitching help. I'm not saying they do it, but I think it's a pretty reasonable suggestion.

"Above average contact hitter" is REALLY over selling it.

That's the best the lineup has looked all year.

If we want to solve the catcher problem we will have to overpay. Norris may be available due to Hedges.

Derek Norris...let's go after him aggressively.

So that one guy....Hicks.....almost hit another one out last night. Encouraging! Am I in the right place?

I'm going to take these apart again: 1) But it is about the highest bidder. It's about the school that is able to artificially control it's own admissions so as to create a phony educational environment that caters to the rich. Meanwhile, all those dollars that are needed for poor kids are non-existent and they get an inferior education. It's the equivalent of throwing our defense behind the company that kills the most "bad guys" for the lowest amount of money. Do you really want something as necessary as national defense at the whim of private companies and the motive of profit? I sure as hell hope not. Education SHOULD be on the same level of concern. It is a fundamental necessity to society. 2) Parents can have a say, go take part in your local school board. But that often gets ugly because people are stupid. 3) You don't have freedom when a sizable portion of your population is unequally educated because of their parent's wealth. 4) Sorry your property taxes go to help a student from a poorer area, but you made the choice to live where you did and the choice to go to a private school. I really can't say more than tough **** on that. And it strikes me as the worst kind of whining when people say what you did because it really amounts to this "I'm tired of all these poor kids with limited opportunities getting some of my tax money!" Yeah, what an awful thing.

One at a time: 1) Do you want our national defense to go to the highest bidder? Perhaps we should have competing mercenary forces in order to better streamline military spending. No? Right, that would be silly. The logic is the same on education. Education, like defense, is a pillar of necessity for a democracy. The nature of competition/market forces is that some lose and in terms of education the losers are children. Just like you wouldn't have "competition" in our military services, you shouldn't put the basic need of any democratic citizen (education) in the hands of the market. It's the most ridiculous notion of the right wing and libertarianism today. And that's saying something. 2) This is true. Bernie Sanders is stupidly going around pimping the German model for efficiency in education. I wonder if he knows that in Germany as early as 4th grade you are dictated on a path away from higher education. Basically, the less intelligent and less educationally gifted students as young as 10 are steered on the path of apprenticeship and not college. Let that soak in and tell me Sanders or any liberal really wants that. But it's not a bad idea. We waste a lot of resources and money dragging the bottom 10-20% along and let the middle and high end kids go with far less time, effort, and money devoted to them. In Germany they lower the standards, slow the pace, and put them on a life path towards a skills job. The higher achieving students are challenged more and put on a path towards more professional ends. 3) Education money should be re-distributed per-pupil by states. No longer Minnetonka money staying only in Minnetonka. It gets spread evenly across all districts in the state. That would help things enormously.

The meme that we underfund education really isn't accurate. You could argue we don't spend money wisely, that would be true. It's true that property taxes as a means of local funding is stupid. (If we insist on property taxes they should be collected by the state and redistributed by pupil population) But we spend a TON of money on our students, the problem is allocation.

I'm a tad confused by this Jim, do you really mean everyone?

Absolutely right Brock, for too many going back to work is a downgrade in financial security. If that doesn't mean the system is broken, I'm not sure what does.

Man those Burdi videos are depressing.

I'm not convinced they have to be cut so much as fundamentally reimagined.

I always think it's funny to hear people compare our education system to Europe. Some countries there literally declare you too stupid for college and steer you towards apprenticeships and job training instead. As if those same liberals that hold those nations up as an example would ever accept that sort of system. But yeah there is a role for the federal government, just not remotely as constituted today.

The difference in foot speed between Sano and Nunez wasn't worth taking his bat out.

Not always and sometimes immediate positives, when viewed in the long term, look insignificant compared to the lasting damages. Look no further than the Great Society initiatives - as a whole a devastating debacle we are still reeling from. I don't want to see welfare or food stamps end. In fact, I could see raising those benefits....so long as we also establish an endgame for them for individuals as well, but many of these programs are ends to themselves for too many.

Posts like this give me a host of troubling questions about the nature of the like button.

Libertarians wouldn't end FEMA, or the national guard, or anything like that....but what role should it play in education? Why is it tangled up with so many contracts for military spending? And let's not even get started on the myriad of financial regulations. There is a lot of room to scale back.

I hope O'Rourke does a great job, but even if he doesn't I'm more than happy to see a change.

His path took him too far to LF and offtrack of the flight path. He had to go over the shoulder because he didn't have time to correct his route. Great concentration to do that, but it wouldn't have looked so tough if his path had been correct in the first place.

Hicks.

It was lucky, bad route, but it was excellent concentration after that mistake.

He made that look a lot more difficult than it was, but glad he caught it.