gehringer_2

22 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Congress can expand the house

More seats would also reduce the electoral college imbalance created by the Senate. I'd like to see them go to 500 reps. Nice round number but not that much harder to manage than 435. Even better would be floating the senate to 200 with the additional 100 seats allotted by population. Much bigger lift of course - but it's on my list with the Constitutional amendments to reverse CU and gerrymandering.

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

I've just about come around to accept the idea of multi member congressional districts, Or some sort of proportional voting and representation. cut the number of districts in half or thirds, then vote for multi members. Or something close to that. 

The current system is wrecked,

 

 

yup - the difficulty with proportional systems is that they drive toward a net 'at large' system were people are not attached to particular geographies. That can be good and bad, but I think the bad outweighs the good. As an example of the worst result of at-large representation you had Detroit, where when the City's Black population started to grow at then end of WWI, they shifted to at-large election of all city council members to preserve an all white city council. That outcome was not only racist, but resulted in a politics were no-one spoke up for preservation of neighborhoods. Believe it or not, it took until 2009 before the charter was finally changed back to a district system (mostly).

1 hour ago, Edman85 said:

I want as many purple and competitive districts as possible. Safe seats beget corruption, extremism, and lack of accountability.

As long as states have odd shapes and unequal population density distribution, maps are going to be weird and gerrymandered in some way. Extreme partisan gerrymandering is no good, but gerrymandering itself is a necessity.

You can generate a politically neutral algorithm to create districts weighting integrity of existing political boundaries against a drive for minimum total perimeters and you can create a fair system. The key is the perimeter value. When that becomes extreme that is the key to recognizing manipulation. Force a map with limited total perimeter and you will do away with the ability to do more than marginal manipulation.

31 minutes ago, buddha said:

we can agree to disagree on that one, but there are plenty of folks who would make a similar argument to yours.

the constitution gives the states the right to determine how their elections happen, which includes how their congressional reps get elected.  this may come as a surprise to you, but politicians acted in bad faith in order to draw those districts!  lol.

what do you mean by "one man/one vote" argument?

It's a fundamental constitutional principle that every voter has equal rights, every vote must be given the same weight. If you *deliberately* manipulate districts to effectively vitiate some votes in favor or others that seems as straightforward a violation of the principle as I can imagine. Certainly one that should transcend any state's constitutional election management options. You could argue that the VRA already set a precedent by playing fast and loose with the principle and I wouldn't disagree with you. Sometimes no good deed goes unpunished.

He didn't wear it at Toledo, or at Erie  before he was rule 5'd either.

He was wearing 14 with the Hens and no-one on the current 40 has it. Wore 27 before his Rule 5 but that's now Sweeney's.

55 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Change the ball to deaden it so as make contact less damaging than it is now?

this seems like the only answer - you have to find a way to make swing and miss, and thus in turn pitching itself, a less important part of the game overall.

42 minutes ago, buddha said:

i hope so.  its killing democracy.

we've argued about whether this SCOTUS is sane or not before, but there is such and easy straightforward one man/one vote argument to be made to outlawing any attempt to draw districts to favor outcomes of any kind that I don't see how SCOTUS can be defended on this issue at all. They made an ideological decision for bad government when there were easy good government options available to them that would not have required any objectionable legal gymnastics to have arrived at at all. These are terrible people and there is no way around it.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable assumption that all the tech that allows pitchers to learn to maximize velo and spin is also teaching them how to put maximum stress on their physiology. Seems almost an inescapable conclusion, but how does any team or even the game as a whole get out of the "arms" race they are in?

Power brick with a mag charger is the ticket for traveling. Depending on how many phone charges you can get from it you probably only need to charge it every 3rd day or so and if your traveling by car all day, pickup a 12V->usb C charger (a few cars now have them built in) and recharge the brick while you're traveling.

14 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Hinch is out of bench players, except for Jake. 

15 minutes ago, IdahoBert said:

What this game does not need is Kenley Jansen giving up a 3-run home run in the ninth. I hope we don’t have to endure that.

So --- Jake pitches the 9th?

interesting McG goes to short, Workman to 3rd.

A guy throws 5 straight balls and Keith swings at ball 6 he can't do anything with.

you knew that after calling up everybody and their brother in front of him, something like this was bound to be the result.

and he hit a pretty tough pitch to do it.

Anderson will not follow Madden with a quality start in relief tonight.

too easy to pitch around Riley there.

So Drew Anderson has been the loaded chamber in tonight's game of pitcher Russian roulette.

20 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

Yeah, he swung hard though. 😆

that makes more sense, the initial graphic said called.

Either Gameday is hallucinating (which I have seen before), or the 3rd strike call on Tork in the previous inning was a foot low of the zone.

21 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

I use it... in concert with the warning labels and at the recommendation of the local extension office. If you do that, there is little risk to the environment. And down here weeds can take over and kill a lawn.

I worked in the chemical industry too long not to take a rebuttable presumption against all chlorinated aromatics.

5 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

No team can have enough depth to cover this many injuries. Making a list...who am I missing? I'm sure there has to be a couple more;

Jobe
JV
Melton
Olson
Mize
Skubal

Carpenter
Baez
Torres
Meadows

Vest, Brieske

the reason tanking is worse is because everything they have done to try to reduce tanking has had the result of increasing the number of teams willing to take a shot at the first pick. It's a counter-intuitive thing. Teams tank normally if there one player head and shoulders (in Wemby's case, literally) above the field. If they just went back to worst record gets 1st pick, there would one, maybe at least two teams fighting it out to be worst, and everyone else would play on because they know they have zero shot at #1. And the one team that tanked would get the player so it would be one time thing for them. The objective evidence is that the 'fixes' have all made it worse, but no-one figures out that the answer to that is dump all the fixes.It's the lottery itself that encourages more teams the take their shot at a ~10% (or whatever) chance.

2 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Coincidence.  They went through the shame **** at the end of last year without an injury to Skubal.  

Freudian typo!

9 hours ago, papalawrence said:

Workman is raking in Toledo. Ops 1.000+

 

let's hope he doesn't leave the rake there.

6 hours ago, Edman85 said:

There's more pesticide use in SE Michigan? I've lived in the south for a while now, and there's a bunch more needed down here. Also, a lot of the anti-pesticide (not all) stuff out there is junk science, so I immediately have some skepticism when I hear them blamed for something.

we use too much 2,4D, but so does everyone. For my money it's a bit insane to plant grass and then put poison on it to stop things that naturally grow in grass from living there (e.g. dandelions). YMMV.

The only positive take away tonight was that Madden saved the BP for the next few days, if they can hit enough to take advantage.