gehringer_2

I would call BS on this one. The frackers were moving plenty of product under the old rules when prices were high enough, and prices are high enough again now.

I suppose that for someone trained as a spy, you might assume the view is that to ever speak an unforced truth is to unnecessarily cede possible advantage.

Well, the obvious one is that when Europeans look at Ukrainians they see themselves in the mirror - there is a lot of cultural identification there and call it racism if you want, it's still very real. Other factors specific to cases include that historically ties from Crimea to Russia maybe were deeper than ties from Crimea to Ukraine - note the relative quiet in Crimea following the Russian putsch. In the Georgian case, I think there is a view of that part of the world that is at least a bit similar to Middle East, which is that there is still so much tribalism and domestic instability in the trans-caususus that the rest of world basically says a pox on all your houses, if the Russian want the problem, let them take it..... Another is that with ex-satellites like Poland, Czech Rep, etc being geographically 'next in line' there is a much more obvious threat of next steps than with Russian expansion in the Caucusus or the Crimean Peninsula. And finally the Ukrainians have done a much better job in the PR/Propaganda dept - having done a better job gaining the world's attention.

Getting warmer in Vladdie's kitchen?

doesn't actually address the question - but the other thing is that why assume that the target of mid market teams that oppose a CBT increase is punishing the players and not the fear it leaves them further behind the opportunity to compete, which has been a point made by Manfred that i think is a fair one even if it's pretty much completely ignored? It goes back to the point that the real effect of changing the CBT upwards is just to allow the Dodgers, BoSOX and Yankees to accumulate more star players at everyone else's expense. It provides no way for mid-market teams to achieve the ability to pay aggregate salaries up to CBT level.

You mean voted against the proposal that was offered to the Union? How would one know if a team that didn't like it thought it was too good or too bad?

If it's a western style water cooled reactor, and its undamaged and you just want to stop it - you drop in the control rods and the reactions die out, but after you do that you still have so much heat in the core you have to keep cooling for a long time or the fuel rods will still melt - thus you need to have power available for cooling (and intact cooling towers) for some extended time - probably a minimum of 12 hrs to maybe 24 or more.

if true that could/should invoke a Nato air response. That is an attack on all of Europe. Not to mention it's a loser's strategy - why you make a mess that could cost billions to fix if you think you will be the paying the bills. Of course you can say that about Putin's whole campaign. Even if he wins, it's a huge loss.

the only way it ends without the fig lead is if Putin is deposed - and those dynamics are pretty obscure to anyone outside the Kremlin

I think this is true, but with every player with under 6 yrs in the league either at the minimum or arb schedule I don't see why they think that is true. Soto getting 10 million more is not really going to to change the market for guys like Schoop and certainly not for any of the young guys.

pretty sad state of affairs, but there we are.

maybe this will be the 21st Century's Spanish civil war. Unfortunately, the bad guy won that one.

or his psych evaluation

I still think it's a dumb hill to die on, get changes in structure as your big gets, the cap is just a number that is inflatable later when you have more of the foundation of a better deal. It still only affects a few teams, if they they think it is the future earnings of the whole sport, they don't do math very well. If this were the NFL and most teams were near or at or trying to play to the limit of the cap it would matter, but more than half the teams in the majors weren't even within $100 million of it last season. How is raising the limit maybe another $20million for only 4 or 5 teams going to close any of that $100 million gap for those 16 teams? If you're going die on a hill for revenue, at least do it for something real like a % split - NFL/NBA style. I'd more believe the owners are playing the union - crying all these big crocodile tears about not wanting to give in on the lux tax just so in the end they can give that away, keep everything else and keep laughing among themselves at how they took the union again.

with attitudes as hardened as they are, you wonder who is out there still getting vaccinations who by now didn't already have one or had no intention of getting one, but nearly 100K people in MI got a vaccination last week as per michigan.gov/coronavirus.

things not sounding good from Kharkiv and Kherson.

she went to Harvard? The school that gets applications from the most qualified students in the country that they can pick and choose? Maybe Carlson knows something but nah, let's be honest, this is a racist troll playing on an affirmative action myth. But just on the probabilities, it's more likely her LSAT's were +90 percentile. By her bio she had distiniguished herself as early as HS, finished Harvard Cum Laude, and oh - just happened to impress a JOTSCOTUS enough to be tapped for a clerkship. Yeah, sounds like someone who never would have made it on her own smarts..... In fact yeah - Tucker is a grade A large asz-hole. (LOL - the fact is that the students at Harvard more likely to get a pass on admission requirements are WASP legacies....)

as long a shot as it is, Ukraine's best hope probably is still that something inside Russia changes. That seems impossible, but things like that always do until they happen.

even mother nature has had enough of Putin. The Russians planned in moving during what is normally the weeks of hardest ground freeze in Ukraine and instead the weather went into the 50's for a couple of weeks.

Well, if they are pushing hard for more than the tax level increase more power to them but it’s still the tax that’s being reported as a major sticking pt.

so they finally got Madigan? That's sure been a long time coming.

general sympathies might be against the owners as they are evil capitalists, but the fact that it's been mostly the players standing in the way of improving the game makes it damn hard to be in their corner either.

spot on Tater.

Just my guess, but the hotter it gets in Europe I think the more China will disengage.

I think the issue with Harris is not her administrative capabilities as much as her political ones - can she herd the cats that a president needs to herd to get anything done legislatively.