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For the record, Bunning started 519 games in his career, according to baseballreference.com.
It never ceases to amaze me how often people think it makes perfect sense to extrapolate their own limited experience to others', and pass judgment based on no other information.
But, geez, 'what a dick' is right.
Still, what a dick.
And yet how is Bunning all that different from his party's leading spokesmen? What significant argument do they have with him, other than that he's no longer coherent or telegenic enough? It's not as if he's saying anything now that he hasn't been saying all along.
This is what Kentucky wanted, and this is what Kentucky gets. This is what the GOP stands for, and this is what the GOP is. All those "few in his own party" are looking for is a younger and slightly less batty version of the same thing.
This is incorrect. Egregiously so.
But knowing your passion for flamewars I will quote Forrest Gump:
"And that's all I have to say about that"
No, he should not respond. And he should do some stretching exercises.
Jim Bunning had all of 11 starts before he was 25. He was babied.
What was his usage like in the minors? I mean, I think Bunning is a senile old dick but there isn't much argument that guys used to throw a lot more. I suspect that is why they could throw more - they threw more at all levels growing up. That doesn't mean, given Strasburg's upbringing that he should be treated the way Bunning was.
Bunning's minor league record is very unimpressive. A losing record, an ERA that doesn't look that good for the time period (though I don't know what his league ERAs were). BB-ref doesn't have the strikeout numbers for much of those years. His walk totals were not good, but not Dalkowskian or anything like that. His record from age 18 to 24 looks like the kind of guy John Sickels would give a C grade to, in that you never know which pitching prospects might surprise you, but nothing there that suggests future greatness.
What was the explanation for his breakout year in 1957? Developed a new pitch? Suddenly found his control?
He averaged about 150 IP per season in the minors, with a low of 123 IP and a high of 193 IP. His last season in the minors (1956) had him throwing 163 IP, with another 53.1 IP in the majors that same season.
Performance-enhancing drugs?
Players from the Golden Era were a special breed who would never stoop to sully the good name of baseball by using performance-enhancing drugs.
This is incorrect. Egregiously so.
I only wish you were right, Harvey. If you can cite a single significant issue where Bunning currently differs from his Party's leadership, I'd love to hear about it. I'm assuming that even a blind pitcher can find the plate every once in a while, but I doubt if it's all that often.
Bunning may say some stupid stuff, but he isn't anywhere near in the running for worst senator. They all say stupid stuff. Usually it is because most of them pretend to be experts in matters on which they are ignorant. Just yesterday I saw Sen. Rockafeller in some hearing berating a witness about security during which he talked about our Coast Guard patrolling with their uzi's and AK-47's. Huh? If he watched the Clint Eastwood movie Heartbreak RIdge he'd know that the AK-47 is the preferred weapon of our enemy.
That's cute.
About a month ago we had problems with our cable and all we got were 5 or 6 stations and our internet was extremely slow. I wanted to find out what was going on with the oil spill so I watched C-SPAN which was one of the channels we had left. The hearing with the BP CEO was on and I watched the whole stupid thing. The questioning and understanding of our congress was so appallingly bad that I truly wondered how they could have gotten to where they were. The only good questions and comments seemed to come from states that had a lot of oil drilling in or around their state.
Hope that links gets you where I found the article from September 1957. Bunning learned to throw a slider that year, and it was a great one, he threw it as hard as a fastball. Even some proto-pitch f/x stuff in there. Bunning threw 20-30% fastballs and 70-80% sliders or curves.
Having seen armed Coast Guard personnel, the weapons of choice seem to be M-4s (carbine version of the M-16) and scoped M-14s, plus they mount Brownings on these really small boats that bounce ludicrously as they ride in the SI Ferry's wake- if they ever did shoot at something I have no idea how they'd ever hit it.
Aww, look who's going to lose the house this year.
How's that Chicago machine hustler working out for you?
So when you start in with your "this is what the GOP is, was, wants, and will forever be!" calumny jazz, it seems like a fairly cynical conflation...you're using Bunning's awful gracelessness & personal schmuckiness to indict all of conservatism/Republicanism as a whole, to discredit our policy goals as well.
In other words, a low blow worthy of a flamewar thread.
You need to hang out with some lefties
To the left, Bunning's politics are offensive and his personality is revolting
To the right, Bunning's politics are ok, but he personally is an embarrassment
Yep, and if I was a Demo strategist that's what I'd be doing, Republican strategists have been using Hillary for years and lately Pelosi to scare people and raise money.
What I don't understand is why the Demos don't start running ads in every center and left leaning district in the country showing Bunning and Bachmann in action and linking the local Republicans to them...
But as a man of the right lemme tell you that we too think Bunning's personality is revolting. You can be a great rock-ribbed conservative without being a prick: witness Tom "Senator Trainwreck" Coburn, who is good friends with Barack Obama and Russ Feingold. Nah, Bunning's just a prick.
It was a question, for the Democrats, of fix the economy or lose the midterms. They have failed to fix the economy, and they're going to reap the expected effects in November. In all likelihood the economy will have recovered enough by 2012 that Obama will be re-elected, but it's not all that likely he'll ever have such a favorable Congressional / policy environment again.
Let's face it, we have too many guys in both parties staying in office in Washington way too long now. It's gotten to the point where many of them would rather die in office of old age than retire long after it has become apparent that they should be at home or in a hospital.
It's not at all how Madison and the gang thought Congress should work, and it's extremely unhealthy for the country for a host of reasons. America wisely imposed term limits on the presidency after Roosevelt, and we ought to do the same thing for Congress.
EDIT: Coke to MCoA.
He was fun to watch. An old-fashioned windup and a buggy-whip delivery. Threw hard, lots of Ks for the day. Not as much fun as Marichal, but definitely a delivery that you imitate as a kid.
Joey, people have been complaining about this since George Washington decided to run for a second term :)
And how. Moreover, Congressmen of all ages, colors, genders and parties have pretty much thrown over responsibility. It's fun to crack wise on W and Obama but neither is anywhere near the true problem. Congress is a vast morass of corruption and insanity and until that's fixed, the problems we face are likely to get worse.
diminishing returns, they've been running against Hillary and people like Barney Frank forever, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that voters in many parts of "conservative America", are far more "familiar" with specific liberal demos (from outside their geographic area) and tend to associate such individuals with the Demo party as a whole, than voters in parts of "liberal America" are with people like Bachmann and Bunning- and that when people in the North East - and not just liberals- get familiar with someone like Bachmann they tend to get shocked and horrified.
What I'm trying to say is that the Republicans have essentially mined out that strategy- there is no longer any upside to scaring people with liberal bogeymen- but there still might be some upside left to the Demos in scaring people with conservative bogeymen.
EDIT: This is request. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying that this thread would be a lot more interesting if we kept the political flamewar out of it.
Of course, I'm not sure what interesting otherwise can be discussed. Old pitchers say they were tougher than today's.
You really think people in New England/NY/NJ are going to be shocked and astonished to learn that there are some crazy/stupid Republicans running around in the South/Midwest? Really? And even if you're right (you're not), what impact would that have on national politics? Aside from a few gerrymandered districts, those states already overwhelmingly elect Democrats.
I'll bite: What is remotely "interesting" about Bunning acting like a jackass by mocking Strasburg?
This. Midterm elections skew demographically toward the GOP base (old white people.) The fundamentals of elections - jobs and the economy - skew against incumbents. There are more incumbent Dems than Reps. Add it all up and you get a possible flip of the House. Which is less meaningful than you might assume, because the Senate will still control the legislative agenda and it will still be within the blurry edges of "filibusterable stalemate."
The major consequence of this is that 1) nothing will be done about climate change (which wouldn't happen anyway, because the Dem caucus has too many coal state representatives and 2) the GOPers/Tea Party folks will make fools of themselves trying to gin up some sort of impeachment scenario for the sitting President.
You leave Milton Bradley out of this!
Ooo, this could take our minds off all the nasty news.
Frank Dolson's book on minor league baseball Beating the Bushes has a chapter on Bunning's career as a manager in the Phils' system in the mid-1970s. Did pretty well and he was ostensibly being groomed to replace Danny Ozark, but apparently he didn't get along with the Phils' GM Paul Owens. I think I can empathize with Owens.
No, but aside from Beck and Rush (who are entertainers and not elected politicians)they don't really have names and faces attached to the stereotypes the way conservative voters do.
beats me, he's basically an unlikeable crotchety old coot.
Let's expand this political discussion, when the hell is Rangel getting the boot?
Thank God! Not that anything could be done.
Isn't unemployment high enough for you yet?
Unemployment is too high for me, personally. I'd like to get it back down to the 5% range. This has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change legislation, as MCoA points out @58. More to the point, we need to address climate change outside of short term economic/election cycle thinking, because climate change is a far more serious concern than the ripples and fluctuations of any given market metric.
Also, the worst Senator is either Jim DeMint or Jeff Sessions. I personally lean toward Sessions as he is unafraid to throw unrepentant racist hack on top of the standard-line Dixiecrat GOPer model that DeMint has nearly perfected. This fails to account for the House and entities like Michelle Bachmann, who is just batshit insane.
Just wanted to get that out there before Dan's Mighty Lounge Hammer descends.
I don't know, there were those people opposed to the bailouts, apparently they wanted a rate of 15-20%
Untrue. Any sort of regulation/tax you pass or threaten to pass (cap-and-trade, healthcare, etc.) will have a chilling effect on investment. Businesses know the costs are coming, and will reduce their return on investment, so they don't invest and create jobs. Especially multi-nationals, who can invest anywhere in the world.
With our absurd trade policy, all cap-and-trade will do is further accelerate the movement of manufacturing to China, where it will be done in the most polluting way possible, doing net harm to the global environment.
Edit: not to mention the corruption and croneyism that will be involved in allocating the "rights" to produce carbon, or whatever.
It is that high when you consider the underemployed and discouraged workers.
The problems with the bailouts is they left the equity holders in place and made the debtholders whole.
we need some name calling- not just WRT Bunning (he's what they call unsmearable- you can call him the worst things imaginable and no one would object) someone needs to smear a fellow primate...
oh wait, that's the old rules, I'm not sure where the line is that gets a thread terminated anymore
It's a Jim Bunning thread, it was going to go there no matter what. If you want there to be no divisive politics (or religion or race or whatever wedge issue you want) talk here, then take your complaints to the people who post such articles, which 99% of time is Repoz.
Except, of course, that global warming stopped 10 years ago. And, most of the data and models were frauds perpetrated by people with a professional and economic interest in "climate change".
But that's no reason not to impose yet another ridiculous burden on the private sector.
EDIT: (Cokes all around)
untrue
also untrue
I don't know whether you believe those untruths or not, but I frankly don't care.
???????
You do know this could get pretty ugly, are you sure you want to level a political thread unmoderated?
And the Earth is 6000 years old, and evolution is "just a theory."
Next.
This is utter nonsense. A report released just days ago establishes that the last decade -- 2000-09 was the warmest on record. The data supporting this conclusion is overwhelming, and your suggestion that it is all merely self-interested fraud is wildly implausible.
The earth got warmer in the 20th century, and no one has any idea why. Some of it was just a rebound from the 18th c. mini-ice age. More warming happened in the first half of the century.
I firmly believe there is rampant fraud and misinformation on this issue from people who are zealots and who stand to benefit from gov't action. The "hockey stick" has been proven a fraud. Did you read what they were doing at east Anglia?
I also believe anything the government does will cause way more harm than good. No efforts will have any impact, besides damaging the advanced economies, since China and the other developing nations will never go along. Even if they sign a treaty, they'll cheat like hell.
The only impact of climate legislation would be to increase gov't power and damage the economy.
Well if it warmed until 10 years ago, it would make sense that this decade was the warmest.
But frankly, I trust "climate scientists" as much as I trust the financial results released by MLB owners.
In every walk of life, we think professionals are a good thing - we like our doctors, lawyers, plumbers, carpenters, even car salesmen to be people who are committed to their jobs. I've always found it interesting that it's only politicians (more correctly, politicians we disagree with) that we think should have limits to their careers.
You know who I love? The Moon Landing Conspiracy nuts.
Man never walked on the moon, it was an is unpossible- so then what
1: Apollo was faked
2: The Soviets were fooled too... or they were in on it!
3: The flag was waving in a breeze, there is no "breeze" on the moon- they were therefore not on the moon but a sound stage [ever see the footage of the flag flapping on the moon? It's fascinating - the movement looks unreal- and it looks unreal precisely because there is no air/wind- the flag pole was being twisted]
4: No stars! No stars! [Jaysus christ people, look outside your window at any time between 9am and 6 pm, see any stars? No? That's not because of the atmosphere it's because of the sun washing out the starlight]
5: You see, rockets can travel to space but humans can't- if you enter/pass the Van Allen radiation belts you die [kind of like global warming deniers discussing climatology]
So when you start in with your "this is what the GOP is, was, wants, and will forever be!" calumny jazz, it seems like a fairly cynical conflation...you're using Bunning's awful gracelessness & personal schmuckiness to indict all of conservatism/Republicanism as a whole, to discredit our policy goals as well.
Well, what did I say in the first place?
I don't see anything there that you've really disagreed with, other than perhaps making a distinction between "batty" and "schmucky."
---------------------
Aww, look who's going to lose the house this year.
How's that Chicago machine hustler working out for you?
Better in substance than in the polls, thanks to a combination of high unemployment and the ability of Obama to energize the loonies more than he's been able to energize his own base. Clinton suffered a far worse reversal in 1994, and managed to survive quite well in 1996.
And what, exactly, is a Republican House likely to accomplish?
Repeal health care? Fat chance.
Pass a serious immigration bill? Don't make me laugh.
Restore the draft and drive 10 million illegal immigrants back to where they came from? That'd work.
Posture and scream for two years, deluding themselves into thinking that it was anything but the economy that delivered them a gift horse? Bingo.
At some point the Republicans are going to have to produce something besides Tea Party rhetoric. Whether they're capable of that remains doubtful.
EDIT: a liter of Coke to shredder.
Poor analogy. For those other professions, doing a good job will generally keep you employed in that profession. In politics doing a good job does not guarantee your future (because most of the electorate is ####### retarded), so politicians concentrate more on doing things to get re-elected than they do on actually doing their jobs. Those with long careers in politics have shown skill at getting elected, not skill at doing their jobs. You are right though that much of the ######## about "career politicians" is just partisan ########.
Denying climate change and human causes thereof is like arguing Joe Simpson was a good player because he made "productive outs."
true
oh people have lots of ideas [which is part of the problem]
you have a kernal of an idea here, but your timing is off, the mini ice age you speak of lasted centuries and ended in the early/mid 19th
nope, more in the 2nd half
per NASA
I also firmly believe there is rampant fraud and misinformation on this issue from people who are zealots- except I see 97.5% coming from the deniers
No it hasn't, and yes I did.
probably true, unfortunately.
Also, if you've been a plumber 50 years, you're a better plumber than someone who's been doing it 5 years. The almost exact opposite is true in politics.
We thank you, o Exhausted Ruler.
Even the United States Congress was really just a part-time job back then, and I don't have a problem with guys getting elected "promotions" so to speak.
But yes, I do believe that government is different from the private sector, and that 12 years in one elected federal position should be more than enough for any man.
What the heck does a guy need to be in the Senate for thirty or forty years for? Let's be real: it's deeply corrupting and all he's doing is feathering his own nest. There's a reason why the most recent Gallup poll showed their approval rating at just 11%, the lowest ever since they began keeping track nearly forty years ago.
Not correct. You don't see stars in the lunar pictures because of poor dynamic range in the cameras used. There is no atmosphere on the moon and, thus, no way for the sun to "wash out" the stars. If you stand on the lunar surface and shield your eyes from the sun (i.e. look the other way) you will, in fact, see stars.
This is why people debating climate science on baseball internet boards is pointless. Everyone basically ends up quoting reporters they like/trust because very, very few people (perhaps no one) understand the climate and there are many variables not agreed on.
He can just scrub the thread tonight, and remove all traces of it. At most they'll lose one or two people who wandered over from ESPN and might have become regular traffickers of BTF had these people not been appalled that politics was being discussed here.
It may have been on Silver's site but someone (on the right) was crowing about Obama's approval rating being stuck in the mid 40s, and someone else pointed out- IT WAS STILL FAR HIGHER THAN ANYONE ELSE IN DC-
I'll agree with the Tea Partiers on one thing- there is an element of anger in the populace at large directed towards the Government at large- however, I think its a mistake to believe, as so many TPers seem to, that their specific form of that anger is widely shared- this may shock them, but I think many lefties are angry at Obama and the Dems- and its NOT because of the deficit or spending too much or taking over healthcare- however, those folks may stay home in November 2010 (but not likely in 11/12)
I see a repeat of 1994-96 (or 1946-48) coming.
I think you've made my point: All politicans are heartless money-grabbers who are only out for their own self-interest. Except for the guys I agree with.
Of course the Supreme Court encourages this by allowing corporations (and yes, unions) to spend unlimited amounts of money to finance and buy off the newcomers almost as soon as they arrive. And who appoints the sort of justices who sign off on this?
There's a reason why the most recent Gallup poll showed their approval rating at just 11%, the lowest ever since they began keeping track nearly forty years ago.
Yes, and what percentage of incumbent congressmen who run for re-election lose their seats in any given year? If that number ever reaches 10% it's considered a landslide. It's always the other district's congressman who gets dumped on.
As for the Senate being corrupting in and of itself, 12 years at the executive officer level of a major corporation will leave you wealthy beyond the wildest imaginations of most people, whereas those same 12 years as an elected official will get you an upper middle class lifestyle. Most people who enter the Senate are already independently wealthy- those who are around forever tend to be amongst the poorest.
I stand corrected
No. That's simply not accurate. What you're missing is that getting elected to office has little to do with actual policy chops, it's like saying a plumber who's been around for 50 years and not 5 will be better at grilling steaks. The guy who's been around forever will be much better than the new guy at the tasks that actually matter to politicians.
Policy =/= Politics, if it did you'd have seen massive bipartisan majorities for the health care bill and for a cap and trade bill and for an immigration bill, since the Dem policies on each of these are very similar to those put forth by Republicans in the very recent past.
This global warming nonsense is such silliness and insanity; normally I'd be surprised that intelligent people pimp this bankrupt theory, but, then, intelligent people are often hopelessly influenced by their biases.
For the record I don't deny that the "climate" may be "changing"; to the contrary, that's what climates do. It's what they've been doing long before the first SUV rolled off the assembly line.
Honestly if the climate didn't "change" the same people would be crying that the sky is falling based on that. They'd be running around screaming "Climate Constant! Climate Constant!"
We know this because three decades ago they they were complaining that the earth was cooling.
So close, drop that last sentence and I agree completely.
This is only Michelle Bachmann's second term in the House, and she has already been a national figure for some time. She's batshit insane like a fox.
Here's the thing, Ray. A single Newsweek cover doesn't actually equate to scientific consensus. Global "cooling" was never supported by the evidence the way warming is. Newsweek ran a pop-science cover, in much the way they sometimes run "Is God Dead" covers. But Newsweek isn't not peer reviewed journals.
Warming climate is fact. To deny it is to deny reality. The warming is fundamentally associated to human behaviors. Again, to deny this is to close your eyes and claim up is down. Which you are want to do, because your personal political bias aligns you with the denialist bloc, and you're incapable of looking past your bias and assessing the facts on the ground (and in the air, and in the oceans.)
Between their ability to gerrymander their districts down to the street level and their virtually unlimited ability to dispense pork and patronage with borrowed and printed money, it's practically a miracle that any of them ever get voted out.
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