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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Come next Tuesday night, we’ll get a resolution (let’s hope) to a great ongoing battle of 2012: not just the Presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, but the one between the pundits trying to analyze that race with their guts and a new breed of statistics gurus trying to forecast it with data.
In Election 2012 as seen by the pundits–political journalists on the trail, commentators in cable-news studios–the campaign is a jump ball. There’s a slight lead for Mitt Romney in national polls and slight leads for Barack Obama in swing-state polls, and no good way of predicting next Tuesday’s outcome beyond flipping a coin. ...
Bonus link: Esquire - The Enemies of Nate Silver
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Cuban American's don't count :-)
Hey, some of my best friends floated to this country on an inner tube!
Howdy folks, Yankee Redneck here.
The last five or six times I have visited the DMV it has been quick with really good service.
That'll happen as you get older. No shame in that, man.
Get off ... my ... lawn?
Same for the last time I got there. I just figured they were onto me...which means there *is* a vast conspiricy...boxes within boxes man.
I assume this is mostly ########, but the 0.01% chance that it is true makes that Rove meltdown 1000 times funnier.
Oh yeah, the Papists, such good friends of rational thought. In medieval days they'd probably just have this fellow tortured to death, I'm sure he knows how fortunate he is to live in a time where the political power of the Pope has disappeared.
Love this part:
Tee. Hee.
No word on whether this harsh critic of steroids users has commented on Bill Conlin's child molestation issues.
They specifically seem to be claiming that they kept ORCA from working.
They seem to be claiming that 1) ORCA was intended to increase votes for Romney as needed (in some way other than just GOTV coordination) and that 2) they stopped that.
Of course, as idiotically twee as that "press release" was, it's impossible to tell.
Since ORCA wasn't going to get hundreds of thousands of people who were going to stay home to vote Romney if it worked properly anyway, that claim is hilarious.
What you've got there, is some "authentic frontier gibberish" ...
It doesn't make any sense, of course, but it makes for amusement to watch.
shhhhhh, don't talk trash about Anonymous, what are you, nuts?
HE LOVES YA GUYS, RICKY'S JUST BEING HIS USUAL WACKY SELF! Haw haw Ricky, you so crazy!
Nonsense. I've never claimed the Second Amendment was absolute, and we've only debated "the line" within the context of your silly "gotcha" game in which the legality of banning suitcase nukes implies the legality to ban all people from possessing all types of firearms.
(I'll note that you said "somewhere to the right of muskets" above, which is the most explicit you've been when it comes to admitting one's right to keep and bear firearms.)
Yeah--even a mid-sized stick isn't something you can wander around with with impunity. If it's cylindrical, larger at one end, and autographed, with the small end shoved through a large, leather glove, and you're walking purposefully, you're probably fine. If it's a 3 foot length of 2 by 4, or even just a baseball bat, try walking up and down the same block in NYC. I give you on average one hour before the cops show up, and they aren't going to ask you a couple of polite questions then let you get back to walking up and down the block carrying your mid-sized stick.
From The Week article linked to earlier:
The Week is the sort of rag that presents as 'news' whatever competing idiocy the far right is currently upchucking: 'Is Romney Really Ahead? Many Pundits Think So.' One test of someone's seriousness is whether they think ####### Bob McDonell has a chance of winning anything on the national stage. Governor Ultrasound has no chance of winning an election outside Virginia. In fact, his position on abortion and reproductive rights generally make him a poisonous pick for the veep slot.
Re hunting for food, of course, have at it; may those who hunt for 'sport', though, find themselves used as human skeet when the Aldeberrans show up for the galactic games.
Daily News columnist and best-selling author Mike Lupica has won the 19th annual Damon Runyon Award, one of the most prestigious awards in American journalism
Am I alone in never having heard about one of the most prestigious awards in American journalism before today?
Award is given to journalist whose work best exemplifies the vivid writing style of legendary columnist Damon Runyon
Past winners include those renowned press room wordsmiths Bob Costas, Ed Bradley, Tom Brokaw and Ted Turner.
He became the youngest columnist ever at a New York paper when he joined the Daily News in 1977.
Lupica turned 25 in 1977, the same age that Leonard Koppett was when he joined the New York Herald Tribune. Dick Young was 24 when he started writing for the New York Daily News. Art Buchwald started writing his column for the New York Herald tribune at age 24. Franklin Pierce Adams was a columnist for the New York Evening Mail at age 23. Dorothy Kilgallen's successful column debuted for the New York Evening Journal at age 23, her fourth year with the paper. John Crosby was a columnist for the New York Herald tribune at age 23. Walter Winchell was a columnist for the Vaudeville News at age 23. Heywood Broun was a columnist for the New York Morning Telegraph by age 23. Sylvia Schur was writing for PM at age 22. W.C. Heinz was writing for the New York Sun at age 22. Rona Barrett's column was syndicated in New York papers at age 21. George W. Daley was a correspondent for the New York World at age 20. Ward Morehouse started at the New York Tribune at age 19. Dan Daniel started with the New York Herald at age 19. Arthur Brisbane was a full-time writer for the New York Sun at age 18. Jimmy Cannon started as a copyboy at the New York Daily News at age 17, and was soon writing a radio column. I would have liked to offer this small correction to the Daily News oft-cited claim that Mike Lupica was the youngest columnist "ever," but wouldn't you know it, they're not accepting public comments.
No. It's so prestigious that when you search for "Damon Runyon Award" it instead shows results for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.
Rick Reilly won the award in 2009. Ha.
But in this situation the person is opting out both ways. The guy in Tennessee who didn't pay his $75 also would have been making no contribution if someone else's house was burning down. In fact, when his own house burned down, the other people still had to send the fire department there to protect their own property. Probably not all that much money/resources was saved, if any.
Fire prevention efforts presumably predated government efforts to do so. It was a societal thing, not a governmental one. If you wanted to be a good neighbor and not a pariah, you might have been expected to take your turn on the bucket brigade. Or you could buy some buckets, ladders, etc. for those on the bucket brigade, or bandage the injured, or some sort of contribution. Or if you were too disabled to help at all, and had no money or resources to contribute to the fire prevention efforts, and still wanted to live in your own home, you could recognize that you are racking up bills that you cannot pay and recognize you are a charity case. Sooner or later, you are going to need someone else's help, and you apparently have nothing to compensate them with, except property with which you are unwilling to part.
Why not leave the decision in his hands, though? (My default position re gummint) If he wants to gamble that his house won't burn down, and assuming his house burning won't affect his neighbors, it's a gamble he should be able to take.
The problem is that puts his family at the risk of his dubious discretion, and IMO that's too important a factor to be sacrificed on the whim of a principle, however much I'd instinctively agree with the principle. If the person lives by himself, and if his house burning down doesn't impact his neighbors, then that's another story.
But even then, there's the chance that his payment got lost in the mail or filed in the wrong folder. These things can happen. Which is why garnishing that fee in advance from his wages might be a better solution than just letting the house burn down.
I do know people right on the line, who can't keep their homes and pay insurance (which, to be sure, is more expensive than the $75 fee mentioned upthread and a rather different deal, so it may be apples and oranges....).
And of course that's the best reason for just using common sense and funding the fire department adequately, through the general tax fund. How fees ever got involved in the question of firefighting in the first place is beyond me. It's like towns are conflating public safety departments with Delta Airlines or Verizon.
I believe it was Crassus who is credited with organizing the first formal fire department - for-profit, natch.
Ugh. I had The Shock Doctrine playing in the background last night. If you could go back in time and strangle one little bastard in his crib, would it be Hitler, or Milton Friedman? Watching Paul Bremer talk privatization is like watching a guy rubbing excrement in his hair while babbling on about his cool grooming technique. And Margaret Thatcher blowing Augusto Pinochet as he's being hauled off to the pokey just leaves you thinking, 'at least they nailed one of these #####'.
It's too late - they've already set his goat on fire.
The braying jackass caucus lost two members in West and Joe Walsh - but just to show my bipartisan bonafides, I'll say they picked up one with Alan Grayson returning to congress.
2014 should be interesting in that I see only two Dems still occupying GOP-tilted PVI seats -- Matheson in Utah and Barrow in Georgia, while the current districts make it a hard slog for the Dems, they do have some PA, NY, FL, VA, and possibly midwest seats that are targets.
All in all, a good season for Team D.
But even then, there's the chance that his payment got lost in the mail or filed in the wrong folder. These things can happen. Which is why garnishing that fee in advance from his wages might be a better solution than just letting the house burn down.
My initial reaction is to let the guy's house burn down as well, but these two points do give me pause. What happens, for example, if the house contains a 17 year old kid who has a job, has saved, maybe bought some things. She is legally prohibited from even having her own account, let alone moving out, so is at the whim of her parents and their poor decisions. Do we need to redraw the line, or does the government step in, or what? I see issues (both principled and practical) with any potential solution, so I am just not sure.
The second issue is just as real. The last time I paid my county car registration by check, they lost it and sent me a bill with penalties. While it was pretty easy to get it fixed, it did take time (just about a week). Not sure what I would have done if it involved a fire, apart from keeping the receipt at the house at all times. I suppose the way to fix that is allow the homeowner to sue the fire department if they screw that up, but there are a lot of items that can't be replaced with money. Again, not a great solution.
One left - McIntyre in NC leads, but probably headed for a recount. It would be a Democratic hold.
Oops - yeah, that's right... forgot McIntyre... that's one of the relatively surprising (likely, I guess) D holds in NC. NC-7 was redistricted into a R+5 district, so that's probably a 3rd 2014 GOP target.
I'll note that your continued inability to read for comprehension limits your usefulness in adult conversation to something akin to a blood leech. (I will give consideration to the possibility that you *can* read but choose not to because you're just too lazy to address the arguments at hand, preferring instead to attack strawmen left and right.)
They'll lose them again in 2014.
Yes, it turns out that when you promise a bunch of goodies to enough groups of people, you build a "coalition" of people who will vote for you and you win elections.
As discussed a few pages ago, Romney's post-election observations were correct, so it's left as an exercise to the reader why liberals pretended his comments were deluded.
Turns out if you run for government office on the platform of \"#### you, I gots mine" you lose.
In other words, you agree with Romney. Just highlighting that.
My prediction is: Two things died in Concord, New Hampshire, this week. You know about one, the distinguished Warren Rudman, whose body was laid to rest. The other was the spirit of bipartisanship he represented. We're still saying last rites over that one...
It wasn't the free stuff that created the coalition - it was being called freeloaders by the GOP. Asian Americans are the best off economic group in the country, and voted for Obama at the same rate as Latinos. Turns out racism, disguised or no, just isn't appealing to anyone but the white voters the GOP already had.
Yep.
So the Republican strategy of promising a bunch of goodies to a small group of fabulously wealthy people wasn't a winner this time? I blame the blah people. You know how they are.
No, I disagree with Romney on a fundamental level. I don't think government services are "gifts." I don't think the ACA is a "gift" any more than I think the Marine Corps is a gift.
Sucks to be you, I guess...
I mean jesus christ, what the hell is WRONG with some people?
This is limited to students I interact with, so of course a huge grain of salt: there was a lot of excitement around the ability to be a part of an election-- most current undergrads were too young to vote in 2008, and the 2008 election generated the most enthusiasm I've ever seen over a presidential candidate (both on election night-- I could not believe the parties in the streets of NYC-- and the inauguration). I was at the Bush inauguration in 2001, and his supporters were outnumbered by the protestors. I don't recall having any sense of ownership over the Clinton victories in the 1990s. Between that enthusiasm and gay marriage, young people turned out for Obama.
But keep running with that ball, it's fun to watch.
Ah, I forgot that you're confused by the definition of "gift." It's something of value given in exchange for nothing. Which is what free health care is.
Granted, a "gift" usually has a voluntary element to it, and usually it relates to one volunteering to give something of his own to someone else - rather than taking something from another to give to the someone else - but that doesn't help your argument.
Not to mention those who get favorable tax rates on their dividends and capital gains, like (duh) Romney himself.
It wasn't the free stuff that created the coalition - it was being called freeloaders by the GOP. Asian Americans are the best off economic group in the country, and voted for Obama at the same rate as Latinos. Turns out racism, disguised or no, just isn't appealing to anyone but the white voters the GOP already had.
If you build a better dog whistle, the GOP will always beat a path to your door.
Who gets the exercise for why conservatives pretended his comments were deluded?
Freeloaders were upset that they were called freeloaders. Hilarious. But sadly, likely true.
Not to mention - ok, let's mention it - that this makes no sense. Not taking as much money from someone - at gunpoint! - is not the same as giving money to someone.
See the difference? Of course you don't.
One of these days I'd love to see Ray walk down the street while every mugger in town knows that the police won't protect him.
One of these days I'd love to see a sign on Ray's apartment that says "Breaking and entering this apartment will be punished solely by whatever protection the occupant may be able to buy on the private market. Steal all you want, it's no skin off our backs. --- NYPD"
One of these days I'd love to see how long Ray's job would last if the government decided not to enforce its patent laws.
----------------------------------------------------
You're cute when you're angry.
That he is, but he's also representative of the current Republican base in all of its Randian splendor. Good news for the Democrats, anyway.
This is the fundamental truth, I think. The things Ray and Romney take for granted are "government services" where things Ray and Romney don't take for granted are 'gifts.' It's just sour grapes masquerading as semantics and ########.
Que se ra. This conversation bores me. You lost. If you want to implement your version of the social contract, stop losing elections.
That guy is just the gift that keeps on giving.
No half-measures. There's too much big government infrastructure and history in this sad nation. Secession is the only choice for properly rugged and self-reliant individuals.
So I clicked on the link (which, as Andy knows, is quite rare for me to do). I saw no reasoning offered by either Graham or Gingrich - just conclusions.
If you link to their reasoning, I'm happy to review it. I don't mind criticizing either of them if they provided dumb reasons, which - if the rebuttals here are of any indication - presumably they did.
You're cute when you're ang... actually, you're not. You're always ugly. Pity, because you're also always angry.
Telling people that you're better than them and they're stupid and dumb is probably not your best rhetorical bet for convincing enough voters to support your candidates such that you can implement your preferred policies, Ray.
This "gifts" argument is just childishness and poor sportsmanship by the losers.
Is it your position that police services or military protection should only be provided to "rich people" that have "paid enough?"
And, yet, true.
There is an imaginary line of income tax contributed by an individual or family, below which you are a freeloader. When you are getting more in "services" than you are paying in taxes, you are a freeloader.
I clicked through his map to Virginia and found out that the fact that several heavily black and Democratic districts voted for Obama at a rate of 2-1 proves that there was voter fraud. Using the reverse of this metric, I have proved that Obama would have won Utah were it not for massive voter fraud.
Then why not just eliminate the middleman and privatize the police? The rich could keep their tax money, and just think how cool it'd be for everyone to have his own private posse, fully protected by the second amendment. It'll be so much fun to live in Rayworld!
No; it is "my position" that your BS argument of "police services or military protection" as relates to the issue of freeloading is a BS argument.
It doesn't change the game at all. If you're not paying more than you're getting, you are a freeloader, no matter if what you're getting is health care or police services. If you're paying more than you're getting, you're not a freeloader, even if you're getting police services. See how this works? It's not complicated.
The winning GOP slogan for 2016: Compassionate Anti-Freeloaderism
I didn't say it would win elections (in fact, I said the opposite); I said it's the truth of what's going on.
7000 millionaire freeloaders.
I didn't say it would win elections (in fact, I said the opposite); I said it's the truth of what's going on.
"Self-Portrait in Search of Myself", by Ray DiPerna
I would investigate the premise here. Integral to Mitt Romney's famous "47%" remarks and Paul Ryan's bogeyman of a "society where we have more takers than makers is not just that some people (disabled, young, elderly, sick) might be getting more than they pay in, but that any government employee is also a freeloader, no matter how much value they provide, because the state signs their paycheck. Seriously, that's the only way you get to such huge numbers of freeloaders: to redefine working people as freeloaders. There are a few nuts loose in this logic, in more senses than one.
Half a nation, half a nation,
Half a nation onward,
All in the valley of Sloth,
Rode the brave makers.
'Forward, the Right Brigade!
Charge for the poor' he said:
Into the valley of Sloth
Rode the brave makers.
'Forward, the Right Brigade!'
Was there a man dismayed?
Not tho the makers knew
Some one had blundered
Theirs must to make reply,
Theirs sure to reason why,
Theirs but to vote and lose
Into the valley of Sloth
Rode the brave makers.
Women to right of them,
minorities to left of them,
Poor in front of them
Bank accounts asundered
Stormed at with regs and tax,
Glumly they voted and well,
Into the jaws of gifts,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the brave makers.
Flashed all their graying hair,
Flashed as they began to despair
Suppressing voters there,
Charging the shanties while
All Fox News wondered
To hell with the fact checks
Break out the myth decks;
Black Panther and Latino
Reel'd from the ID checks
Didn't matter; the nation had blundered.
The party retreated, but not
Not the brave makers.
Women to right of them,
minorities to left of them,
poor behind them
Tax bills a-rising;
Glum futility of it all,
While Mitt and others fell,
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of tabulation,
Back from the mouth of tribulation,
All that was left of them,
Left of brave makers.
When can their delusion fade?
O the silly charges they made!
All Fox News wondered
Honor the ######## they gave
Honor the Right Brigade
Noble brave makers
It's a point of ideological faith for you. It's not truth.
Let's start with the ACA. Did Democrats not promise free health care to people? WTF was the point of the ACA, then?
(Real answer: wealth redistribution, but that doesn't help your argument. Realer answer: securing votes for Democrats from the groups promised free health care, but that doesn't help your argument.)
They promised people access to insurance, which hardly means free health care. In fact for a considerable number of people, ACA means they'll have to start paying some premium, however nominal, for the right to pay some reasonable share of their health costs. (As opposed to the current system, where they either pay backbreaking amounts or truly nothing at all, in an illogical, inefficient, and counterproductive system of care and finance.)
My version is tendentious too, but I think it's a little closer to reality. Feel free to add more nuance :)
No, they didn't... that might be because I don't speak paranoid gibberish -- is it something like a dog whistle? -- but I didn't hear or read 'free health care' promised in any of the Democratic health care proposals that date all the way back to Truman, much less in regard to the ACA, which was 'weaker' than any number of proposals that go back generations.
The point of the ACA was to turn health insurance into something more akin to a public utility - largely private and for-profit, but with stringent controls to normalize the costs such that dumb luck regarding whether clusters of cells decide to mutate into cancer or genetic predisposition towards vascular or heart problems doesn't doom one to destitution in order to receive readily available treatment.
But everyone already had "access to insurance." Yes, I know what liberals mean by lack of "access" -- they mean lack of money -- but that just proves my point. Because the way that liberals gave them "access" was to give them money, in the form of free health care.
Nuance? That's a French word, ain't it? Tell us how much you loved Saddam, Frenchy.
No, they mean an end to all but a very limited and statutorily defined subset of discriminatory practices in insurance eligibility and cost escalators, as well as end to lifetime caps, etc.
Which - even accepting that - is free health care.
People are promised free health care. That is the entire point.
I don't think "free" means what you think it means.
Lots of people with pre-existing conditions had no access, even if otherwise well-off. Now, you can define insurance in a way that excludes people who can't pay their full medical bill, but the whole point of insurance is redistribution; healthy people are always going to pay more than they get, and sick people will be "freeloaders" in somebody's eyes. But that does not mean that anybody's really getting anything for "free"; it just means, as zonk says, that the principle of insurance (all pay something to avoid a greater risk; some may never recoup their outlay) is extended across society. It's not, as I said, "free."
Naww... just a poorly defined variable.
Stack trace indicates the problem was simply an undefined "free" variable... it should be fixed now. Try running it again.
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