gehringer_2

And depending on whether you believe they have gotten a couple of goal-tending performances that are above average for the goalie involved, even that distance to the right may be unsustainable.

Bush administration also went all in with political hackery in appointments, both in the courts and the cabinet. He had the most straight up incompetent government in my life time - worse than even Trump at many departments. Bush screwed up DOE, EPA, interior and the Park Service, not to mention the really big messes at AG with Gonzales and with his defense and intelligence services, and of course Alito - maybe the worst appointment to the court in history. Colin Powell was the only person in that whole admin worth their salt, and they cut him out of the loop when it mattered. (ok, John Danforth before he died)

The man’s fundamental ignorance is appalling. Pretty obvious that the people who say he won’t read anything are telling the truth. He has the knowledge base of a person who hasn’t read a book since 5th grade. And the fact that on countless occasions doesn’t seem to remember when he was president is about equally appalling.

It certainly has been a weird episode - weirder than at the LAT exactly because of the above. And of course if Bezos actually does think he has a deal with Trump that is worth more than a copy of the W. Post that's been rolled up and left out in the rain for a week, he's losing his marbles faster than Trump or Biden.

I wouldn't have minded Mitt for himself, but by the end of Bush II, I was already soured on the GOP in toto and have been wanting/hoping to see that party crash and burn completely enough so something useful could could re-emerge ever since

what we learned tonight was that Warren in the only guy in the QB room that actually has a major college arm. Problem is that as could be seen on his very 1st attempt where he couldn't pull the trigger to a wide, wide open Loveland, his decision making talent is way behind his arm talent. QB situation notwithstanding, I don't think I have been that surprised by a UM win since OSU three years ago.

True it was his first year back, but he was a lot longer coming back than average so in terms of total time since surgery he is already a long way out

It's a great diversion though - sort of the ultimate straw man argument, because the key point that is glossed over is that the underlying premise is of the controversy is completely false. Even if voting procedures were somehow changed improperly (and the courts ruled they were not) there isn't a shred of evidence or logic to support the idea that that in any way should favor one side or the other. If your guy is more popular, he's still gonna win if more people vote. That's the beauty of straw man arguments of course - get the conversation pinned on some point where you think there is room to argue and use the noise around that aspect of the argument to obscure that none it makes any difference in the real world anyway.

LOL - Don't get me started on Whirlpool. A couple of years ago we had a new Kitchenaide dishwasher go south while still under warranty. What a total cluster trying to work though the claim was. After about 6 weeks of screwing around and service calls by two different guys who had no clue what they were doing, they decided they couldn't fix it, so they bought me out of the warranty for $800. You can guess the rest. I fixed it myself for $125 (all it needed was a control board.) True story. Still working fine.

I knew a lot of Pfizer employees in Ann Arbor and it was the same deal, all your retirement money went into Pfizer stock and a lot of folks got hosed by not getting out of that when it started on a long decline.

Since the SO did 30 yrs at the big 'U' she has TIAA, and when I did a stretch of time there as well I also ended up with a smaller piece there. They used to be sort of the gold standard if you had the good fortune to work where it was available. More more recently they have connected to Nuveen as their prime investment placement agent and I'm less certain, or at least still less knowledgeable about them.

So, I'm less concerned about Torkelson, just because I think the situation will resolve itself more clearly. Bad starts in a second full season are sort of a common outcome - either he shows up in spring and has left it behind or the 31 HRs in '23 was just a fluke. Either way, I think the answer will become evident pretty quickly. With pitchers there are so many ways to go before you know if you are ever going to get anything: add pitches, drop pitches, move to relief, that I think it could end up being a more ambiguous decision with more chances to go wrong. But as noted above - I'm sort of resigned that if we can get Will Vest V2.0 out of him, maybe that's the end game.

I think it's getting worse even at the upper levels. When I went through Engin School we got the whole nine yards on investment economics, time value of money, ROI, depreciation, economy of scaling factors, all in the Engin school plus a 400 level macro economics course at the lit school. The students in the program today can get through without seeing any of that.

expect two waves, the 1st taking out air defense assets, and the second to hit the objectives.

So on the heels of the WaPo and LAT stories, the NYT OP-ED today has a multi-segment multimedia take down of Trump on the theme of "He says horrible things and you need to believe him" that goes on for 8 sections. This is about the 3rd big anti-trump piece the Ed Board has run on the OP-ED page. This piece is a full on direct argument for against voting for Trump. There is no shading of the editorial board's position, yet the piece never even mentions who the alternative is. Only mentions Harris' name once and that only in relations to political enemies Trump has threatened. Will they leave it at this or will they write a Harris endorsement tomorrow or hold it for the Sunday, or do nothing else? Stayed tuned for the next installment of "As the MSM turns"

If a newspaper doesn't want to do endorsement, that's fine. The problem is that WaPo has already made endorsements in all the other VA and MD federal office elections so instead of a principled decision to change a policy before an electoral cycle stared, you have an obvious putsch by ownership to overrule his own staff and cut off a process that had already run nearly to completion for this election cycle. So instead of being a expression of principle, it's simply an admission of that Bezos is willing to prioritize his other business interests over the editorial integrity of his newspaper. A guy like that should probably sell to someone else - unfortunately for the public, newspapers don't make enough money for anyone likely to be editorially independent to be interested.

Just remember, if the Braves call about a pitcher, say, “NO.”

The changes in registration patterns is another factor. Dems used to out register Repub but then voted in lower numbers. Now it's more chic for the college educated to claim independent status even though they becoming more reliably blueas voters, and since the college educated also turn out more reliably, that shifts turnout outcomes on the blue side. So all of these trends are in motion simultaneously in addition to the attitude (and availability to consider places beyond NV) changes in early voting.

and everyone is still guessing. Early voting is too new and too much in flux in too many states to have established patterns, especially when the last presidential election took place in a once a century black swan setting. The whole polling/EV exercise this year continues to strike me as a bunch of otherwise smart guys trying to figure out a way to solve for N variables with N-1 equations.

This is funny because I had thought that is exactly why they soured on Blashill - they were playing so basic/safe a style that they couldn't produce, and when Lalonde got here I remember posting that I though they were playing a better possession up tempo style, but you hit it on the head - they are playing so conservative north/south again that they refuse to reverse the puck to hold possession - they won't risk going cross ice in their own zone so their outlets are always bottled up on the boards or dump and chase and they don't have the speed for that on the secondary lines. Nor does it help that ~80% of Petry's clearing attempts are directly to the other team and 90% of Veleno's rushes also end in possession change. Those two guy alone give the puck back enough times to kill production. So either Lalonde thinks he has a worse roster than 2 yrs ago or he's turned into Blashill. But it's the passivity - mostly by Wing forwards when on D in their own zone that really drives me crazy - either pressure the puck in your own zone or go get some players that can and coach that will coach it. OK - so all that said, it's early. Maybe they are going to look better against different competition - the Rangers may make a lot of teams look bad, and maybe the Devils are going to have a good season.....maybe.

he went the IL middle of July. Pitched only 9 innings across 3 starts in September for the Hens so his 2nd half was pretty much a loss.

Jack is lucky they are good enough friends that Ras just skated away.

This game was an object lesson on what the Wings offense has to work on. Devils players moving constantly without the puck, someone is always open to take a pass. On the other side, the Wings still can't close out on anyone in their own zone. They constantly look down a man at even strength.

I thought Raymond played a decent game tonight - did a lot of hard work on the boards.

Ras showing a little fire there.