gehringer_2

a lot of bluster here. The US, Saudi's and Isr could blow what ever is left of Iran's ability to project power off the map about 5 minutes after any shooting started and the Mullahs know that. Iran will get a few licks in but they know they will end up on the losing end of the exchange big time. Keep in mind that the reason a state like Iran spent so much on proxies is because they were conservative about the risks were willing to take themselves. Their problem is that in trying to save their credibility after leaving their routed proxies out to dry, they've now crossed the Rubicon with the 2nd attack on Israel. US pressure notwithstanding, an Israeli strike is coming - it will be major and they don't know where it's going to fall.

I'm very curious to see Edvinsson's impact. Not so much the physicality, though his ability to rub out rushing wingers is going to be at least 2nd best on the team, but for his ability to control the puck, another skill the Wings need more of.

True. What I remember, which is pretty sketch because it was damn long ago, is that Hammer was sympathetic to Russia, but not disloyal - not in the anti-American way we see with Russia's modern American provocateurs.

this is true. The mailings from the Act Blue and the DNC are pretty hysterical

He's due to be awesome.

but of course this is a double edged sword since adjustments can only be validated after the result. People have to understand that statistical methods can only read a signal that is really there and they can never capture change in a moving population until after the fact. Both US politics and communication system are in the midst of deep change and which models, if any, from the past will be most accurate going forward is the $64 question.

Sure, there has been a lot of talk about "the Business Man - Trump" being an irresistible draw for Hispanic men worried about their employment prospects. But again, this is not Trump coming out of nowhere like in 2016. If a Hispanic man pulled the lever for Biden in 2020, what has happened in the last 4 yrs to make him think he now wants Trump back? Unemployment going down? Infrastructure spending (and huge #s of Hispanics work in building trades) at a generational high? Housing starts may be down but people sitting in houses pinned by their low rate mortgages are spending on home improvement like drunken sailors. Polls can postulate all they want, but if there is no plausible theory to the way they are being interpreted, that leads to a certain level of skepticism.

Old fools are the worst kind.

LOL - I looked at this pic half a dozen times and couldn't figure out where you were going - then finally saw the knife blade. (I do have a new pair of reading glasses on order!)

IDK - let the Rays get used to playing somewhere else, Tampa may never get them back.

Still, they are going to love having to spend a small fortune to repair a building they are going to tear down. I suppose, depending on whether the interior design could take the weather, they might be able to just leave the roof off for two seasons.

the US airline business is total screw up. I don't know if we need the CAB back, but we at least need a new set of rules for how the players in a supposedly competitive system play their game.

Don't they have a deal to build a new ballpark?

Oxy was Armand Hammer's company. He was one of history's more colorful CEOs.

I'll tell you another thing which is probably flying under the US media radar, which is non-maga Christians are starting to push back harder against the Christian Nationalist movement internally in a way that was not present 4 and certainly not 8 yrs ago.

to me the fundamental questions remain - who is voting for Trump that didn't vote for him in 2020, who is not voting for Harris that voted for Biden in 2020 - especially since Dobbs? Maybe there is some groundswell movement in the country I have completely missed, but I can't see answers to those questions that favor Trump.

The mistake in 2016 is most pollsters closed up shop too early because conventional wisdom was the electorate is frozen a month out. IRRC, the few late polls did show Trump closing. Clinton got a huge boost coming out of the 1st debate but lost a lot of ground in the subsequent two, plus Mueller's thumb on the scale late, were all driving movement away from Clinton. The E-MailGate was critical because Clinton had always generated high negatives, there were a lot of people looking for an excuse not to vote for her. In contrast, Trump's campaign performance by any honest assessment is if anything getting worse by the week, his response to the hurricane has been a huge unforced error, other current news cycle preoccupations like Woodward's book are all working against Trump, and Harris has run a campaign surprising free of mistakes - so far, and Harris' and Walz' public people skills are just better than Clinton's were. Harris has run at far less risk of shooting herself in the foot with off-putting comments in public appearances.

This is the only real data point and there are enough reasons it may be leading!

Response rates to polling have been steadily collapsing even since 2016. Political polling is becoming a house of cards of assumptions about your sample that are pretty much unverifiable until after the election is over.

Someone will, no third party is going to win a EC vote this cycle.

Trying to decide if PAZE offers any value over ApplyPay or PayPal. Sounds like it’s just the banks trying to horn in on some action they are missing. Thoughts?

In the short term, Iran is probably the most likely place where a direct attack on US citizens will originate, particularly if the US and/or Israel finally end up attacking the nuke program. The total threat from Russia is more varied and ultimately more existential, but also less a matter of immediate security risks than of keeping up a steady build out of social/civic/IT/intelligence resistance to Russian operations.

the width is easy enough, but I always wondered about the top and bottom myself, but the other day one of the analysts said that they keep a running average of each hitter's last 100AB and the top and bottom lines are the average over those AB of the what the umps have actually called. If you follow a game on MLB gameday where the 'cartoon' has a fixed background, you can see the top of the strike zone box change a bit wrt the background on each hitter.

this I can believe. The one thing the Tigers have working is none of these guys are are near FA yet and most are not even into their later arb years so no-one is leaving any real money on the table for not being a starter or closer....yet.

True, but if the competition committee brings them something with a lot of old-timey Tony LaRussa like sage of the game we know the game better recitation, how likely are they to shoot it down?