gehringer_2

yours is a common view, that often leads people to stay home, but the logic of that still escapes me. There is always a difference between the candidates. If you can't find some difference and push the process at least incrementally in the direction you prefer, all you have done is take yourself out of the process. There is no such thing as a meaningful abstention in our process, no one cares about the principles of your stance. If you don't vote, all you do is guarantee that no one in the process will ever care what you think.

LOL - the SO just added Cadillac Mtn to the agenda for this summer's road trip. I told her NBD - if we continue on to the Canada maritimes we can see it earlier than that.

It's seared into your memory because Nick Punto had more career PA against the Tigers than any other team.

good adjective for a dancer maybe.

To finish the little digression here, I will say that what Hayak argued in 'Road to Serfdom' is correct on one level, you will ruin an economy and polity if government 'control' of the economy reaches too high a level, when too many economic decisions are colored by political or even corrupt and otherwise non-economic factors. What Hayak was wrong about was his measurement model. His model was that government control of the economy was equal to the government's share of spending in GDP. That is another example of a plausible but flawed model leading to flawed ideology. What Hayak missed was that in the modern welfare state, the majority of government spending is transfer payments, and transfer payments are fundamentally different than other forms of spending. When the government buys jets for the Air Force, that is spending where all the decisions are driven at the political level. If the government owns the car company, the decision about where to buy steel becomes a political or patronage decision, likewise who to hire or where to put the factory. Too much of that and you do tank the economy and the general level of liberty in society. But in the US over 50% of government spending is transfer payments. In a transfer payment an individual ends up making the decision about how that money is spent and he spends it in a free market. So it's a completely different animal with regard to what Hayak was worried about. Once you take out the transfer payments, the percentage of US (or Euro welfare state) economy 'controlled' by direct political/government decision making falls below the practical concern level for a failing 'socialist' - old school meaning- economy.

True - they were not going undefeated the rest of the way, though losing the next one to the Panthers might have been the better choice standings wise, but not that big a deal.

But to be fair, what Bernie describes as Democratic Socialism is a more limited concept that the broader concept of Socialism as understood say - 75yrs ago. Bernie is interested in redistribution of resources and much greater regulation of private interests. Maybe I've missed it but don't remember him talking much about the public ownership of production resources and nationalization of industries (other than maybe healthcare, which is a very unique 'industry') as was seen in post war England. Many countries, like those in Europe that Bernie cites, do perfectly well with the social welfare aspects of 'Socialism' that Bernie is describing here, but they by and large do not practice socialization of the means of production on the model of post war British coal. It's the latter that inevitably leads to economic malaise more than any expansion of social welfare programs in a regulated capitalist economy. This ambiguity/evolution of the practical meaning of 'socialism' leads to a lot of silly politics. People like Bernie like to give themselves the charisma of wrapping themselves in terminology that makes them seem more chicly radical than they are, while the right wing sells horror stories of the economics of the Soviet Union and pre-Thatcher England that Scandinavians can only laugh at.

They came sort of close to multi-party socialism in England and that didn't even work.

Nice semantic overlap that the original connotation of supporting those who used tanks aligns with the modern idiom of 'being in the tank for.'

I haven't checked it out as I don't have any dead batteries right now to compare, but even if there is something to it it's going to be very inexact. But on the other hand, if you just want to know if a battery that you find in a drawer is worth getting the meter out for maybe.....

I don't know which is worse, his bigotry or his ignorance, but they do run neck and neck.

this is going to depend on the type of battery. An old style carbon-zinc battery will actually stop bouncing as it discharges because the can is dissolving as part of the reaction and so getting softer. But I assume these are alkaline batteries. The effect here is not due to the case because an alkaline battery is wrapped in a steel can that is not part of the reaction. I'd guess what is happening is that as an alkaline battery discharges the electrolyte, which in a fresh battery is pretty well immobilized, eventually turns more liquid and if there is free liquid inside the battery that will suppress the bounce - or the opposite - but affect it one way of the other (just like raw egg won't spin but a hard boiled one will). I'd guess it may still depend on manufacturing details that may vary by manufacturer though..... Guess I'll have to get out the voltmeter and check this out......

After getting 30 games with the DBacks in 22 (mostly at 2B) and not hitting much, Kennedy started out last season with a lot of promise at AAA putting up a 925 OPS though mostly OBP and little power. In August the Diamondbacks called him up for 3B but after he had only 4 hits in 10 games they pulled the plug and sent him off to Oakland, who sent him to AAA but at that point he played only 11 more games and didn't do much. Has played 2B and 3B recently. Compared to Lipcius probably more bat upside.

😢 Another of my AAT's bites the dust. (maybe)

When will they have to re-up Raymond and Seider?

and whether Patrick Kane is a RedWing next season is a good question. Kane is probably loving playing with DeBrincat and sometimes Larkin (the three of them on the rush for DeBrincat's goal against the Caps was a thing of beauty) but if he finishes healthy he's going to want to get paid and I'll be surprised if the Wings offer him as much as some other team will.

Any good GM should make a move that makes sense even if it departs from his usual philosophy, my point initially wasn't so much that Holmes would never do something as that from what both he and Campbell have said since they have been here, they value depth seriously. That seems so obvious for the NFL and yet previous Lion FOs absolutely did not build depth and it seems one of the most SOL things of all was Lions seasons crashed by injuries.

The sane ones keep trying to salvage their old party. It's a co-dependency we all keep hoping they'll free themselves from.

You could get there from Barenboim - as in the conductor Daniel. I've looked at Ellis Island records for people in my family that came in the 1910-1920 era - the approximations of the names can get pretty funny - especially first names where they were even less concerned with accuracy.

we've had this debate before. The gov and purpose you serve is bigger than the particular pols running it at the time. If you are SecDef and you disagree with a war your resignation means something. If you are miles down the food chain it means nothing. Whether she supported the policy mistakes of the Iraq war is certainly fair game, but that arg needs more to support it than that she wanted to serve her country. If your intelligence work is saving the lives of the grunts on the ground you shouldn't keep doing it because they shouldn't be there?

have never heard that one before either.

Exactly. All that matters are the ones that make it. You can draft a lot of high floor guys and look good in the system evaluations and never build an MLB team. I think in the baseball draft you mostly have to swing for the fences, ceilings are all that matters, but even then there is a fine line between doing that too much and coming up with nobody at all as cellings can be hard to know. For instance Carpenter and Bigbie have probably already exceeded what theirs were assumed to be at draft time. Workman maybe a case of guy with a potential high ceiling who couldn't get there. Do you call him a failed pick or the kind of chance you want to be taking?

Tigers were starting to figure out pitcher development under Avila, they didn't seem to have a clue about hitters till the end though.

This week reminds us: If Chelios could come to the Wings, anything is possible!

also note what Campbell said in his presser "in this league, everybody gets hurt." I think we will consistently find that when given the option, Holmes/Campbell will opt to have two good players instead of one great one because your depth is going to play as much as your starter. And esp if they can get the two for less than the price of one and have more to spend on another spot.