TheLeviathan

I hope Rosario does do that - the sooner the better. Hicks too, but Hicks has had 500 ABs to displace a guy like Robinson. It's his total failure that's the problem, not the Twins decision on what to do with him.

He can like whatever music he wants. That's not the problem. It's the uncanny stupidity of his pandering that's the issue. At this point if you asked the man "Coke or Pepsi" he'd respond with some kind of stupidity like "Pepsi, it's wrapped in the beauty of the american flag just like the Baby Jesus. Look at this historical proof I have as verifie by Republican Scientists" http://drawception.com/pub/panels/2012/3-29/PWbxFFLwOC-6.png

I hope it went something like this: MP: I'm pissed TR: How much money did you make the last two years and how many innings did you pitch again? MP: I'll behave. TR: Damn right.

Thanks Chief, that was a depressing post. Yowza.

Totally agree. And frustrating as hell.

Let's just say that if I didn't know better I'd think he was trying to give himself a concussion.

The Secretary of State, perhaps the second most important position in our government, was secretly housing an email address she was actively using on private servers on her private property to handle sensitive state business....and it's not a big deal? That's the kind of stuff Frank Underwood pulls while disposing of an inconvenient reporter. It's super shady, especially when a bunch of the emails magically disappear. This wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't for everything she's doing now that makes it look as shady as it seems.

Did you see what he said. It wasn't even clever pandering. It was baby kissing bad. He literally found a way to say "I care so much about 9-11" from the question "What's your favorite kind of music?" That's friggin ridiculous. Both parties own that. Let me show you: "They're coming to take our guns/marriage definition/christmas tree/money/freedom/Christian Values" So yeah, that's both parties.

The original question was "should we?" and my response was most definitely. A third consecutive year with miserable CF options is just inexplicable. I think it will be a very harmful decision for this season.

But we can't talk in specifics about anything in your first paragraph. I don't have specific names because I'm not the one getting phone calls and neither were you. I could say Ben Revere and we have no idea if that was a possibility, but I know this: The odds of Shane Robinson, Jordan Schaefer, and Aaron Hicks being the best we could do coming into this season are extremely remote. And it should have been a priority to improve both our starter at that spot and our Aaron Hicks insurance. We did neither.

I hate this question because embedded in it is this assumption we can know who was or was not available. I can assure you of this - if you think Shane Robinson was the best we could do I have a very, very hard time believing that. Pollock, Bourjos, Dyson, Gentry, or Maybin or anyone that is a better complement to Schaefer. The idea that the best we could do in CF is Hicks, Schaefer, and Robinson is just ridiculous.

Yeah, if Dick Cheney had done this the left would be in a tizzy. She clearly and deliberately was circumventing the law. This should be a big deal.

Man I can't wait to see if a veteran like him will get Slowey'd. I've got my popcorn ready.

Yankees but damn Hawk Harrelson made it a hard choice.

We definitely should have sought better CF options.

"Major league ready" doesn't mean instant all-star. Every player goes through a final adjustment and maturation and most struggle through it.

Google why Ted Cruz likes country music. That's a doozy of a comment too.

Good.

I'll be honest, I didn't read the whole paper, just the abstract, but one major concern I have with his proposal is that it assumes price indicators will drive student behavior. I think part of the problem is that kids entering college largely don't care one bit about what they sign as long as they get into college. I'm not sure how fluctuating interest rates based on risk factors is going to make a radical difference. From my vantage point the problem is that loan money is a bottomless trough that colleges gorge themselves on precisely because college kids offer two of the most dangerous factors for abuse: relentless demand and complete indifference to long-term consequences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_Education_Act_of_1965 It sort of was the choice. It's been reinforced by the "solutions" being bandied about now, none of them include cutting off the problem at it's source. The entire problem the left has in being more effective is that the means get lost in the end and anyone that criticizes the means gets labeled some pretty awful things. That really, really needs to change because it's the key to crafting good policy. Not everyone that is critical of left-wing policy is some idiot like Ted Cruz. (Even if many of them, including most of the other party, are)

I know this is off the Ted Cruz topic but let's face it, politics is always going to weave on and off topic. This is interesting to me. Pseudo, I don't think that's completely fair, I think there are uniform beliefs on both sides at the heart of both sides. The issues less at the core of both sides tend to diverge more, which I think your examples illustrate. But yes, there are more examples of that on the left largely because of the religious angle I think. Part of the problem on policy, I agree, is compromise. The right certainly influences some of the problems in left-wing policy in a bad way, no doubt about it. The problem the left has is paving the road for their vision. Again I encourage looking at college debt as the ultimate example of liberals drunk at the wheel and how similar that is to many social programs. Starts with a good premise (We want people to be able to go to college if they want if they otherwise cannot afford to) but then goes too far. Rather than find a neatly tailored method for doing this we get some ham-handed "here's a whole bunch of virtually unregulated money!" and the thoughts on the consequences of that are all but ignored in the name of the ideal. And anyone that questions the method gets painted as anti-poor or minority. (Not....you know...this is just a super crappy way of helping the poor and minorities) Result: Now everyone can go to college, but it costs exponentially more, has lined the pockets of already rich people on the backs of the young and poor and minorities, crippled spending power for an entire generation, weakened the quality of college education in order to keep mouths at the trough, and made college degrees far less meaningful, and now we want to spend another giant pile of money to patch the bleeding but not fix the true source of the problem. I mean...UGH! There is just something about that constant cycle with liberal policy that drives me up a wall. I want so badly to get in line behind the ideals but this keeps happening over and over again and no one seems to learn their lesson. So frustrating - maybe the left-wing needs to really embrace libertarians instead. I could get behind that, sober both groups up a bit.

I hope no one tells Alex Meyer that being 27 is enough to mean you're no longer a factor. That isn't too far away.

This is true, but that hasn't stopped some optimists. Not that long ago people were saying 2016 World Champions. It happened, the problem is that those who have preached "whoa!" to such predictions have been painted as negative nancys. There is a strange dynamic that those who are bored with the rebuilding are more patient in their expectations than those professing their love for the rebuild.

Considering all of Buxton's setbacks, I think it would take quite a few things to have to happen before he'd get the call. But it probably doesn't hurt that our current CF options look like the Bad, The Worse, and The Ugly.

Work on them is what I want and the military budget should be fair game too. There shouldn't be any sacred cows. The problem is neither side really wants to touch the military because it's the equivalent of political suicide. It shouldn't be, but that's what it is so I don't really hold one side more to blame than the other. (Though the rhetoric side of the problem is clearly driven by the right) The problem for me is two-fold - Brock is right that the Republicans have branded extremely effective talking points and arguments for winning support. They are hollow and stupid at their core, but effective. The other half of that is the best way Democrats can continue to stay in power is to actually craft effective solutions to problems. I think that's getting better, but there is still a lot of resistance from both sides to a balanced approach. For instance, Dems still believe the best way to fix rising college debt is to "forgive" loans when the real problem is the loan system they put in place in the beginning. Dems want to get people out of poverty but struggle to craft policy that both gives aid and encourages education or job placement. They want to improve the education system but are essentially puppets to the teacher's unions. I don't want that to come off as pro-rightwing, because it's not. I hold the left and Dems to a higher standard because....well look at Ted Cruz and that should explain it. I want so badly for the Dems and liberalism in general to get my full support but they just do so many stupid things that disappoint me that I'm stuck in the middle.