gehringer_2

the problem for the players union is that they are fighting the wrong battle. The teams near the cap are not the problem for baseball salaries, it's the teams nowhere near the cap who won't be affected at all by whatever the number is. How much difference will the lux tax number have on the Marlins or Pirates? Exactly none. If anything, Manfred is right that the tax money is one route for low revenue teams to spend more - thought without a mechanism to force that, that's also is an empty promise. But It's teams *with* "cap space", that, and pre-arb salaries that hold down the revenue split, not the cap. As a union in toto, the player's union is a total failure - all they are interested is protecting the interests of their own "1%" class to sign half billion dollar contracts, which again, does nothing for the most of their membership or median salaries at all.

And sounded like a Trump cabinet meeting, didn’t it?

not home to watch this one but just ran through the clips - the Larkin goal - unbelievable body control. And the game winner courtesy of Bert and the quickest stick in the West.

yeah - it would be a great seed of paranoia to sow wouldn't it?

was it Churchill's line "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,"

this is a thing to consider. So no matter how bad morale was among US troops in 'Nam, you weren't going to find may US soldiers ready to desert by walking into the jungle and looking for a handshake from the VC. OTOH, how hard will it be for a young Russian who feels he's been deceived to walk into the Ukrainian countryside and share a vodka over his sob story?

I'll return the favor a say you are over reading what I'm saying.. Your question was - or I least I read it as - is this happening because Putin or is he just being swept along a larger current of Russian cultural/political imperative. Or more simply, if Putin was not running Russia, would this be happening? To that question I come down pretty solid that I believe there is a very good chance - at least better than 50/50, that it would not. But since Putin suppresses open discussion in his country no question it's harder to tell, but that in itself argues a fair chance of disassociation twixt the tyrant and the population - wouldn't you think? Now if you want to argue that the animal spirits in the Russian national soul could not have produced any leader less fixed on the restoration of empire, then of course the conclusion would be - "it's not all Putin", but I'd disagree with that - Russia has produced a number of semi-reformist leaders - Krushchev in his own odd way - Yeltsin, Gorbachev, so it's not an impossibility.

actually I'd question that. Putin runs a kleptocracy, the politics are not important to the Russian Oligarchs - they support Putin because he's made them rich, not because they care where the lines on the maps are. A war like Putin appears to be planning will do nothing to add to their pockets and is starting out to do quite the contrary. Putin's ruminations are anachronistic, why would they appeal to any of his modern money men? Nobody did well under the Soviet empire but the apparatchiks - certainly nothing like what the oligarchs have achieved. And their self image is more along the lines of playboy of the western world. So no, I don't really see the logic of there being some great movement in Russian society to rebuild the empire.

the english guy still has guests on together.......Graham Norton.

well, TBH, it was his intangibles that were lacking, I would still like to have this speed though...

because like all good tyrants, he has neutered all competing centers of power around him.

still, speed has a value beyond pts - especially to a team that skates as badly as the Wings, and AA had it and the current Wings need it. It was still a great trade, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that in the short term it isn't hurting just because Gagner has equalled AA points.

Putin is too machismo to stop. The world can only wait and hope some mechanism remains inside Moscow capable of upholding KGB tradition and putting a bullet in the back of the neck of an asset that has outlived its usefulness to the Rodina.

That's 'moran' to you. We have standards around hear.

HaHa. I don't how anyone can still be so naive to pay attention to twit 'trends.' They are right up there with 'reality' TV when it comes to .....real.

Rats jumping off a sinking ship?

this has been curious. There was video of Russian helos buzzing around the first day, but not much else. The other thing that is a little off is there is a difference to your average Russian between Chechnya and/or Syria and Ukraine. They probably didn't give a fig about how what was left standing by the Russian army in either of those places but if they destroy Ukraine to take it, even Putin has to have a sense that becomes a Pyrrhic victory. At this point we are pretty much writing him off as irrational so we have sort of stopped talking about whether things make sense I guess.

Yeah - they are little behind the curve. BP and Shell out, Microsoft moved within hours to shut down a Russian hack a couple of days ago, Facebook closing the checkbook for Russian sites, Google controlling map data, Finland talking about NATO, Germans writing $100 billion checks, Switzerland (!) freezing assets. I'm sure in his wildest dreams Putin never anticipated the length and breadth of the opposition he was going to galvanize. How long can it be before Xi sees which way the commercial wind is blowing and throws him overboard as well?

and in his case, it most definitely doesn't mean we are not out to get him.

on the other hand, in comparison to other recent conflicts where the Russians stumbled and eventually reset, they were not facing an adversary with a $20 trillion economic resupply line (and that's just the EU, $40 trillion if you count the US). The Russians will not be able to wear down the Ukrainians resource wise if they maintain a will to fight and supply lines can be kept open - the latter being the big question of course. I wonder to what degree this understanding by the Russian General staff has argued against them fighting the more all out war that Putin may want and that is now predicted to be next. If they start killing a lot of civilians, political pressure in Europe will become untenable and it will draw that much more Euro military resource into the battle, whether official - or as Rob notes - possibly unofficial. If you 'sell' a blue and yellow Predator to Ukraine and fly it from inside the border, no-one will be able to prove it was a CIA team in Poland doing the piloting... and so on.

The internal logic was all about 'rescuing' the Ukrainians so why you would have to knock out utilities or bomb the cities? Putin is faced now with the reality that he can only conquer Ukraine, not bring it joyously into the Russian bosom. He is probably fine with upping the ante on the carnage, as was done in Georgia, but is the Russian army and populace? Russia may have a tightly controlled press, but even Putin can't keep a hot war in the middle of Europe under a bushel basket when there are millions of families with members on the other side.

The traditional 'conservative' interpretation is that unless there is a direct violation of US law, the state courts are the ultimate arbiters of state law (and thus also whatever restrictions a state's Constitution places on its own legislature), so another chance to observe if this court is actually conservative or just as blatantly political as it stands accused.

I'v seen no confirmation of Vindman's contention that Gerasimov has been removed, but if Putin starts removing General Staff he better have them shot because they would be the vector for a palace coup.

I noted that myself somewhere up thread and it can't be forgotten. But on the other hand, we weren't under serious time pressure of a growing international counter-response and were at least trying not to kill indiscriminately. No-one was resupplying Saddam, he was not going to get any stronger and nobody was crashing the US dollar on the folks at home. And at that point we were only fighting the Iraqi army, civilian resistance had not taken root that increased the need to get control and pacify --- so I would guess Putin doesn't have a month to get this over. Given all that, I could see Putin just blowing the whistle at some point when the cost is getting too high and playing for a permanent partition along whatever lines the Russians control. Then comes the 2nd test of Western solidarity.

I read a report that Ukraine is emailing the families of POWs to tell them their children are OK and go fight Putin if you want them to get back home.