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Wait, now who's "unskewing" Nate? I thought the main basis of Nate's early and consistent prediction of an Obama win was that the fundamentals of the race pointed to a 2- to 3-point Obama win despite the weak economy?
That's absolutely correct, even though the "unskewing" in this case was in reference to your unemployment rate unskewing, and not Nate's projections.
And so what's your solution to the fundamentals, when the fundamentals say that you can't unseat a not particularly popular incumbent in a time of 8% (or more, according to your unskewed metrics) unemployment?
So far you've shot down every possible solution, most of which center around moderating your party's unpopular social views that seem to increase the turnout of the opposition more than it does your own. You've pretty much written off the votes of every group other than white men and extreme social conservatives. You've got an answer for why every one of these groups votes Democratic, but you haven't told us how you expect that to change, beyond rooting for an even worse economy.
Again, where are those extra votes going to come from? You think that the black vote will drop without a black candidate at the top of the ticket, which is admittedly likely. But what's your contingency in the event that you're up against Hillary Clinton, whose personal popularity among all groups except blacks far exceeds that of Obama, and whose "base" is 51% of the population rather than 11% or 12%? Beyond once again praying for another Depression, are you seriously thinking that Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio is the answer to the first female presidential candidate to be nominated by a major political party?
And the 5 percent unemployment hypothetical doesn't tell us anything; any scandal-free incumbent should win in a walk if the economy is booming.
Yes, but this time the unemployment rate was 8%, and your man still lost by 4%. And here I thought that Pollyanna was a girl.
i am speaking to the people i know, the people with whom i am friends, the people who are all either cowby or raider or steeler fans because that is the nfl football that was broadcast into mexico in the early 70's (why, i have no idea), these the people who are my frame of reference. good people. hardworking people. people of faith.
anyone who is writing off people with that background as potential gop voters is a wangdoodle. it's just ridiculous to think that way.
and of course it's more complex than mere immigration as a topic but being associated with groups that are plainly demonizing latinos for whatever bizarre purpose is not helping the gop brand and causes all other messaging to be lost.
period.
Funny, a lot of folks are saying the government's handling of Sandy has been worse than for Katrina. Meet the new boss.....
congressman ryan has presidential aspirations. he likely doesn't want to be associated with a recession. congressman cantor apparently is considering a run at senator or governor. so same.
meanwhile, the guy with no such ambition is the speaker who may have the cleanest hands in this process as he wants a deal because maybe he thinks its the right thing to do versus just trying to help himself.
Even if I granted that was true, are you also saying I invented the fiction that a significant portion of the GOP are perceived as bigoted dicks?
Funny, a lot of folks are saying the government's handling of Sandy has been worse than for Katrina.
They are? Where?
what folks? being old and a lover of the weather channel i have followed the aftermath of the hurricane pretty carefully. other than the usual griping that comes with any cleanup effort who is stating that the government has failed on a large scale? certainly the governor of new jersey has received rave reviews.
QFT. It is not about Amnesty means more GOP votes there is a total package of GOP positions that clearly turns off pretty much every ethnic group out there (now starting to include Cubans, which is new).
Regarding Pawlenty, he wasn't going to win. He would have fought well and recieved a percent or two more than Romney because he is a better technical politician, but boring.
In 2016 in favor of the GOP you have:
* 8 year fatigue with Democrats
* New candidate (likely not a retread)
* Likely no minority (non-white) Democratic candidate
* Not going against an incumbent (I doubt Biden wins nomination to inherit semi-incumbency)
* Possible changes to states apportioning electoral votes by house district (which clearly favors GOP)
* The Democratic parties lack of infighting may break by this point to a more natural state of Democratic disunity
The Democrats have:
* Demographic changes continue including
- All the cohorts of the fastest growing parts of the population are pro-Dem
- Older voters supporting GOP social agenda die off (slowly)
- Younger voters which are strongly democratic age into voting, and age in chorts which vote more
- Likely some form of amnesty will release a whole bunch more Democratic leaning voters into the pool
* The GOP crazy brigade will still be going strong saying dumb things about Women, Minorities, Science, ...
* The national popular vote intitiative will be continuing
The wildcard is of course the economy, world affairs, and who gets chosen as candidates - and who the heck knows at that point. I think you can build a narrative that could favor either party, I think the most important features are which is more important 8 year fatigue or demographic changes.
Third with the "really"? (and preemptive cokes as needed)
In reality the response may have been worse (I doubt it, but it is possible), but the narrative from the MSM (liberally biased, naturally) is not that at all.
Hasn't everyone forgotten that Obama's economy is worse than W Bush's, Benghazi is worse than 9/11, Fast and Furious is worse than Iran Contra and Solyndra is worse than Watergate for these partisans. Asking for any sense of proportion or objective lens during the era of Obama is impossible for some on the Right.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/30/staten-island-residents-vent-frustration-at-fema-other-agencies-during-town/
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2012/11/28/will-femas-handling-of-sandy-be-obamas-katrina/
From the above:
http://www.sott.net/article/253953-FEMAs-Camp-Freedom-for-Hurricane-Sandy-victims-Disaster-relief-or-just-a-disaster
From the above:
And of course these are conservative sites, the liberal ones have never taken Obama to task for anything, so they're not going to start now.
***Important disclaimer***
I am not a Republican/Bush/Romney supporter
I am not a Republican/Bush/Romney supporter
Awful hard to find anyone willing to cop to that these days. Don't feel bad.
Aren't there news sites neither explicitly liberal or conservative? Really I suspect it is a continuum not binary. Anyway I am not seeing anything near the level or Katrina news coverage. Heck it could be actually handled worse than Katrina was, but the news coverage is nothing near as negative in total. For example Katrina killed Bushes popularity, but Obama is sailing along fairly well.
Yes, but since God has decreed from on high that only a Republican or Democrat, funded by corporate money, can assume national office, anyone not on either of those teams is considered a conspiracy kook.
The typical American "useful idiot" in one line. Rather than accept a personal account from someone living in one of these relief camps, you disregard it and bring in a completely unrelated reference in order to heap scorn on the messenger.
The typical American "useful idiot" in one line. Rather than accept a personal account from someone living in one of these relief camps, you disregard it and bring in a completely unrelated reference in order to heap scorn on the messenger.
Oh, come off it.
What does this have to do with news sites? Let's take Politico, which is a site of "usefull idiots" as you used in your post, but one that has a lot more interest in $ than Democrats/Republicans. If Sandy is such a disaster as Katrina was, why wouldn't that site have an interest in selling that story for eyeballs.
Life would be utter hell living in a FEMA camp for anyone, but the reason that they are there is because of a huge natural disaster and a lack of personal resources rather than incompetence. The FEMA camps were on the bottom totem pole of problems for W's Katrina response. Lack of leadership, preparedness and response to the disaster were the sins that most people held W in contempt for. You should read up on Katrina's woes from some of the more non-partisan sources if you want to know what a FEMA calamity looks like.
I think evaluating how Obama is "doing" vis a vis Sandy is mostly a matter of optics and messaging. Aside from sending in FEMA and asking for money, what is he supposed to do? Bush's incompetence during Katrina is probably overstated as well...though he does seem to have put a total lackwit in charge of FEMA.
No, you're just posting crap about black helicopters patrolling FEMA camps.
These two clauses are contradictory. The very most important and obvious incompetence from Bush with regard to Katrina was that he put a total lackwit in charge of FEMA. It's been said before, but the problem wasn't that Bush was running around personally intervening in an attempt to keep Katrina victims out of food and water. It's that he and his administration staffed the agencies of the government with lackeys, ideologues and donors who had no clue how to run government agencies. (See also NASA.) When you staff a government with people who believe their primary job is to undermine the functioning utility of their departments, you are then responsible for the dysfunction of those departments when it comes back to haunt.
I agree with this as well. When your city is wiped out, there really isn't a whole hell of a lot anyone will be able to do in the short-term except minimize discomfort and danger. "Bush's" response to Katrina didn't do a good job of this but had a lot of help from the leaders on the ground. I'd say Obama comes off better than Bush mostly because a) Katrina is near enough in memory that everyone knew people would be paying attention, b) it was in the middle of a campaign when Obama had a lot of PR folks at the ready to put out a good message, c) the head of the federal response wasn't a blithering idiot (this is fair criticism of Bush and credit to Obama), and d) the local leaders in Sandy response seem to be orders of magnitude better than the local leaders in Katrina.
The other quirk to throw in is the failed levies. Once the storm was over in Sandy, it was over. The fact that so much of New Orleans was below sea-level and reliant on the levies made the situation far worse and dragged it out for days, providing great visuals for the TV folks. From what I've read, the places in NY/NJ that were below sea-level didn't do so hot in this storm either. That is just basic physics that the president can't control. If you build a town below sea-level, near the sea, expect disaster.
The idea that POTUS is going to have a direct hand in helping folks in the near term in such a disaster doesn't make much sense. But it is a great opportunity to look like an idiot. In this regard, Obama really benefits from Bush and Katrina in that a charming smile and not having the locals cursing your name is seen as a great success.
Fixed.
QFT. Putting the right people in charge of various portions of the executive branch is a very important and underrated part of being president. When you are a conservative and believe government is by nature evil and/or inefficient and/or incompetent then it is no surprise your appointments do a terrible job.
Treating governing like patronage, preparing for the next political campaign or without any real forthought has consequences.
Exactly; he'd never support atheist socialists like Bush or Romney.
i have experienced varying degrees of weather induced outages (tornado, snow, ice storms) and for a hurricane i would expect things to pretty much stink within 2 weeks of the event.
i know when my relatives were in cincy feeling the residue of katrina they didn't have power for over a week and that was just downed power lines and the like.
i am all for holding govt accountable but expecting magic is something a child does.
i kept the barn warm via any method possible to protect my livestock. sure i had a generator for a while. but eventually the fuel ran out. so then i was burning stuff including chopping down ice laden trees.
i share this not to brag because i was just doing what was needed but to dissuade anyone from saying i don't know what these folks are feeling.
sure i do. it stinks.
Oh right, that could never happen in America. My bad.
Qualifications: Former head of Florida Division of Emergency Management, Bureau Chief for Preparedness and Response in the same division, Emergency Manager for Alachua County, FL. Before that, he was a fireman and emergency responder in Alachua County. So he has both administrative and boots-on-the-ground experience with natural disasters.
FEMA Undersecretary, 2005: Michael Brown
Qualifications: A lawyer. That's pretty much it. He was a lawyer for FEMA for a little while before being made its head, and had been involved with some poo-#### race horse outfit -- that's his management experience.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with the way Bush ran his government before, during and after Katrina: He didn't appoint competent people to critical positions, apparently because he didn't believe the government was capable of / necessary for much. The President cannot (A) change the weather, or (B) personally rescue people from drowning, but he CAN appoint the people who actually coordinate (B). Brown was inexperienced and undisciplined, and a liar to boot. Just because Fox News can't wrap their heads around the fact that the situations are not equivalent does not mean than anybody in particular believes that.
i share this not to brag because i was just doing what was needed but to dissuade anyone from saying i don't know what these folks are feeling.
Having lived in both, I'd far rather go through a weather disaster in a rural environment than in an urban environment. Living in a small NY apartment, I would guess it's impossible to outfit oneself to the extent necessary to be self-sufficient when the lights go out. The farmers I knew growing up would take a small step back in lifestyle but any extended trouble was usually met with from scratch solutions. Ice storms were usually adventures (to be fair, Harvey, it wasn't my livelihood on the line) but I could usually get a meal and warm place to sleep in exchange for some, not very demanding, labor on a farm or ranch.
That isn't to rag on urban dwellers (of which I am now one). I have no idea how I'd deal with something like Sandy hitting my city at this point. I have a few more toys that would help than the NY folks but not many. And I don't know any ranchers who would appreciate my help.
understood
my larger point is that you are always going to have folks griping after an event. it's the volume and duration of the griping that matters.
as much as i want to swipe at the govt i don't see the opportunity with sandy. i have all kinds of contacts in that area and nobody is telling me anything other than it stinks but that they are muddling through.
There are simply physical limitations present in the universe as to what we can do. We can't always make everything alright. Certainly not right away. Keep people from dying. Get them back up as fast as possible.
Wake up, sheeple!
Does anyone remember who Candidate W. Bush entrusted with conducting his VP selection? No? It was Dick Cheney. And Cheney essentially told Bush none of the VP candidates were better than himself. So Bush simply chose Cheney.
The only real qualification is to be alive and breathing (and a native born U.S. citizen), so Cheney had that covered.
Cheney was quite possibly the most effective VP in history. I wouldn't confuse the fact that he was evil with incompetence.
You could say that about the President.
No, but they're "perceived" as so by the same sorts of people who perceive any opposition to same-sex marriage as bigoted.
Various places. A great many people in Staten Island and Long Island have seen their houses and property destroyed. But since they're mostly white, and a Democrat is president, I doubt most liberals care.
Liberals are fond of playing identity politics. So let's play it.
That's an oversell. Donald Rumsfeld was evil and in thrall of false assumptions (some truly, fantastically stupid false assumptions) about the world, but he wasn't incompetent per se. I don't think anyone would call Condi Rice incompetent, and certainly not Robert Gates. There's a degree of distinction between Rumsfeld or Henry Paulson and "Brownie" and the guy put in charge of NASA.
Sad troll is sad, Ray.
Quoting from one of his posts last here:
Dick Cheney is a good example of all of this exactly because his prior reputation would never have led people to guess that he'd make such a habit of botching things. And yet, botch things he did, over and over. Not because he didn't understand policy, but because he -- and by extension, George W. Bush -- refused to accept the limitations on the presidency imposed by the Constitutional system of institutions. And as Cheney shows and as Goldsmith says, the consequences are predictable: poor policy execution, followed by a loss of presidential power.
Full Post
He's written more than a little bit on the topic and he's pretty much convinced me that he's right.
Perhaps, but not by much. 150 Regent law graduates in the Bush administration.Monica Goodling, remember?
What is FEMA supposed to do? No one, including local, state or federal governments can rebuild houses in six weeks.
Obviously the concern is that Sandy hit so many Real Americans, while Katrina's damage was largely concentrated in the 47-percenters who are lazy and dependent.
Right. But what is your evidence that the handling of the pre/post disaster actions by the government for Sandy is worse than the same actions for Katrina? Who is saying it is worse, and how are they deciding it is worse than Katrina?
So loving Jesus is supposed to disqualify you from public service? I'm glad you were able to clear that up. Shame on you and your War on Christ and Christmas and whatnot.
Cokes, but this is a weird way to put it. What are you saying here? That the stories of the Jersey shore and Staten Island being destroyed aren't stories? They are. I hear about them evern day. If your point is not enough houses are being rebuilt fast enough, the story of the immense amoutn of government aid and bazillions of dollars has been a story. WTF are you looking for?
If these were mostly minorities and Bush were president, we'd have a reaction from liberals along the lines of what we saw in Katrina -- not as bad, but only because the sheer volume of destruction in New Orleans was worse in that more people were impacted and there was the special levy issue. But the same, shameful themes of racism would have been pimped by liberals.
The complaints I've seen are largely directed at local officials. The most important specific complaint I've heard revolves around local authorities interfering and causing delays with things that are on the critical path by demanding action on things that are of objectively lower priority. I know a lot of local engineers were unhappy with the directions they were getting from local officials. But I'm buggered if I can see how that reflects badly on the administration response.
There's no evidence that Bush was a racist, or that the federal government's major screwup w/r/t Katrina was due to racism. And yet that's what was pimped.
If only there were some sort of handheld device, powered by batteries, that could be used to receive text messages and tweets even by people without AC power.
/troll-feeding
Your bubble is airtight sometimes, kid.
Yes, they should have tried to call them on landlines and then looked quizzically at the handset and shrug their shoulders when the call went nowhere.
Of course. The modern liberal worldview is almost entirely animated by race.(*) They're utterly obsessed with it.
Since they are, they presume everyone else is, and thus anything that a Republican does is based on race. (And the converse is also true, as Andy's running treatise on the 2012 election demonstrates -- minority voting patterns are virtually entirely explained by the degree of "racism" or lack of racial solicitousness they perceive in Whitey.)
(*) Throw envy in there, and you've covered 95%+ of the motivating factors.
I tend to agree that the "racism" thing was overblown (thanks, Kanye!), but the #### ups were still huge by the Bush government (and his appointed leaders) before and after Katrina struck.
I'm just not seeing how the government has handled things before and after Sandy is worse than before and after Katrina.
You haven't provided any proof or examples.
But I fear it isn't competent to feed itself. I don't want a troll's starvation to weigh on my conscience.
Yet oddly enough, it wasn't even mentioned in this conversation until Ray brought it up as a bogeyman and you jumped in with the reach-around. So there's that you should account for at some point.
iPhones need to be recharged once they go dead, in case you're not aware.
Actually, people may have had use of their landlines.
Until we jump in, it's presumed. The like-minded don't as a matter of course sit around questioning understood tenets of the catechism, or stating explicitly what is presumed.
Oh, I won't disagree that the federal government under Bush screwed up Katrina immensely (*), and a lot of people suffered more for it. It's the racism drumbeat that is moronic.
(*) As did the state and local governments, but one would never know it from the shrieking of "Bush!Bush!Bush" done by liberals.
So you presume that "liberals" presume racism?
And according to the report from the guy staying in the FEMA camp (that's what it is, a camp run by FEMA - I'm not being inflammatory), everyone was told that power was in short supply and they weren't allowed to plug in their devices.
I will make a good-faithed attempt to adjust all future conversations for your Magical ####### Mindreading Skillz, chief.
Was power in short supply? Was there more important, more fundamental services to be powered by the limited supply? Is there any reason to think that the short supply of power is unreasonable given the facts on the ground?
I find odd that we're talking about Staten Island's slow reconstruction pace when the 9th Ward of NOLA is *still* not rebuilt. Maybe the ladies doth protest too much.
You don't get it, Sam: The 9th Ward of New Orleans is made up of "takers", who should be grateful that they've still got a football team.
Does it come as a shock to some people that anyone who disagrees with the liberal agenda is branded a racist/sexist/bigot along with a twist of cruel/greedy/selfish?
Screw the financial cliff, I want to know what I can get that RoboSquirrel
Why don’t you stop threatening the life of the President, which, because Ted Nugent did it, is something that Conservatives Do, all the time?
Wait a sec, I'm pretty sure Dubya was just stupid.
People say a lot of things that aren't true, or exaggerate things that are true on some level. I'm not ready to indict any government agency based on hearsay from one person who quite likely has an ulterior motive. I'm not saying the guy in the camp lied, but what we have here are disparate, unconfirmed reports that:
a - the government tried to communicate to people in areas without power with texts and tweets and
b - people staying in FEMA camps were not allowed to recharge their cell phones
From this, a conclusion is made that here is a piece of evidence that the government response to Sandy is more incompetent that its response to Katrina. A bit of an overreach I would say.
I don't know, but to charge an iPhone takes 7 measly watt hours of power. I don't know how many people are/were in that camp, but charging 1000 iPhones could be done with one small gas generator, for an hour a day. Why was there razor wire around the camp? These are questions the media should be asking.
Do they have 1000 outlets to connect them?
Will everyone just sit around and watch their iPhones charge, to make sure no one steals them?
I haven't seen any pictures of the camps. Do you have one that shows the razor wire?
Maybe to keep people from stealing the generators. Or maybe there was no razor wire. Or maybe there was razor wire around a small, specific area that required high security.
Keeps the aliens in.
AFTER they ask all those questions they were supposed to ask about Benghazi.
Oh wait, you heard about it from media? It’s almost as if you’re talking out of your ass.
What comes as a shock to no one is that you create this bogeyman "liberal" behavior and then tilt madly at it, Pancho.
Maybe razor wire was the most readily available to build the facility at short notice.
Maybe it's the government and their specs say build fences with razor wire, so they did.
Maybe this is an absurd conversation that requires a paranoid-conspiratorial assumption to begin with to even make sense as a question.
What's the implicit argument here? That the government is locking up the good, hardworking white folks of Staten Island in FEMA camps? Are they going to bus in the no-good taker classes from NOLA and give away their houses or something? Or is this something more nefarious to do with mind control and Khan's revenge?
That's from the bottom link in post 1811. So they were allowed to charge their cell phones. Unless they complained about the conditions in the camp. I'd say the former is likely, and the latter extremely unlikely. I'd say the most likely situation is that people were free to charge cell phones, subject only to a possible shortage of outlets.
But that doesn't fit the narrative of the incompetent government on one hand communicating via text and on the other preventing cell phones from being charged.
Well, no more so than they chose to be, intentionally, by living on Staten Island. The big selling point for Staten Islanders prior to the storm, if I understand this correctly (and I'm open to input from more local types) was that it was cut off from the rest of the area. The only access points were ferries, boats and the Verizano Bridge, right? So, when a big ass storm blows through and drops all of the boats into the streets or on top of the docking piers, I would guess that would make getting there to help them more difficult.
I have no idea what the rightists are even talking about here, but it's bizarre that "paranoid-conspiratorial" would be flung around so blithely by people who presume George Bush's Katrina response was motivated by racial animus.
Oh no, Hussein X has much more luxurious accommodations lined up for his swelling army of Afro-jihadists. No buses for your new masters.
I did not know that.
Ok, three questions:
1. Can people oppose same-sex marriage without being bigoted?
2. Can people oppose illegal immigration without being bigoted?
3. Can people oppose wealth redistribution without being some combination of racist/cruel/greedy/selfish?
Unless by "takers," he thinks Republicans mean only "blacks." In that case, see 1860.
And Ray, to be frank, who ####### cares if someone considers you bigoted for holding those opinions? Is there some kind of bigot tax you have to pay? Does it keep you from getting a job? No, it just hurts your feelings. And I thought liberals were supposed to be the weenies.
There are also obviously non-bigoted reasons to oppose wealth redistribution or illegal immigration. It’s a reeeaaaal stretch with gay marriage, though.
And to point out the blatantly obvious again, the only people to mention race in the question of Bush's FEMA organization and response are YOU and RAY. But keep tilting, Pancho. Those windmills are totes dragons, brah.
But what of it, I did not come here to post that :) I'd just observe that George W Bush is not personally a racist, and I don't think he had racist policies. The problem is, when you respond to a disaster that has wiped out the homes of so many black people, and put them in extremis, by (a) playing air guitar; (b) saying Brownie's doing a heckuva job; and (c) mourning the loss of Trent Lott's beachfront property – you have to take the perceptions as they come. And you know who's very good at avoiding bad perceptions, except from the delusional right? Barack Obama.
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