Leaderboard

Trump is not well informed by choice. He lacks intellectual curiosity and instead relies on the opinions of people who share a similar ideology. Trump has a very limited vocabulary..probably on par with a 7th grader. That indicates to me that his internal conversations are as shallow as a puddle. Trump is a narcissist , a know-it-all and a bully. I don't think he ever learned a lesson from bullying the wrong guy in the school yard or otherwise got his ass kicked for mouthing off. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, got every break in the book, cheated contractors out of getting paid, cheated on three wives, and now is trying to leverage a freaking pandemic for his own personal and political gain. So don't tell me that people want this dude gone because CNN or MSNBC do not treat him fairly. They want him outta there because now they know who he is.

CNN, like any other news organization, is far from perfect. But Trump adds to this situation with his stupid tweets and anger. Not to mention he has no respect for the truth. For one thing, I am sick of the fake news slogan. Any time Trump or any Republican is confronted with something they need to answer, they simply say fake news and walk away. There is inaccurate and slanted reporting. I watch MSNBC, but I even I can see the bias at times, and some of the things they do make me sick. Really sick. I was glad to see Chris Matthews go. That man was awful. But if I want real bias and real fake news, it's Fox. Those people have no shame. They don't care how they lie or who they smear. And they are still not taking this crisis seriously, and that is dangerous.

I see some are forgetting how legit the Reds look.

The Sox advantages are uniquely built for this scenario Two All-Star caliber catchers (going off of last season) to endure a lot of double headers. Hopefully, they'll be 7 deep in the rotation once you add Kopech and Rodon. Lots of power up and down the line up. If pitchers get screwed over by the air in Arizona, balls will be flying out of the park. Building off of the above point Arizona Engel.

This is fucking stupid.

Right, I get uncomfortable when defending journalism and people lump in CNN/msnbc/etc. We are 4 years away from their hyperventilating coverage of that one plane disappearing. Watching 24 hour news networks for 4 hours a day will not make you smarter. You will get looped each hour and listen to people with provocative, baseless arguments. However, I'll admit when there is actually breaking global news they suddenly find their journalism pants and you see correspondents you didn't know existed with excellent stuff. But reading a full newspaper, especially with rich local sections, will absolutely make you smarter. And you don't have to read the editorials! There isn't a single editorialist at the chicago trib I like, and their editorial board has an almost comical ability to be on the wrong side of everything even while trying to avoid the appearance of opinion, but the paper does great job all in all, with some terrible articles here and there. It's coverage of covid in illinois is incredible, including repurposing the dept. of health daily stats with a data viz center.

I just gave up on all the "news networks" (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, other alphabet soups), and my news diet is almost exclusively from journalistic sources. My regular reads are WSJ, Economist, WaPo, the Trib. Occasional reads on NPR, NY Times. Some of those have their biases too (some right and some left in there) but A) they do quality journalism and just as important, B) they separate reporting from analysis/opinion and do it clearly. I think that second thing is a big part of the problem with network news, it's all blended together so that opinions start to obscure facts. I highly recommend making a switch like this. Clarifies the mind quite effectively. That said, none of those networks - even Fox - lie or manipulate at as high a rate as our own damn President. Just watch his COVID briefings for G-d's sake.

The scary thing about it is POTUS is still listening to them and seems to be inclined to blowing off the science when it comes to "opening up the country">

Well, if you are getting it from what is called fake news, CNN, ABC,NBC, CBS....you aren't getting the most accurate. For that, there is Fox News Or maybe you just want it straight from the WH. Here's his new press secretary

The Strokes are back. That is all.

Sox are suddenly in a tougher division with no Tigers or Royals to stomp on. I think the Sox could compete for a wild card in the Cactus League. Especially when you consider that a lot of NL teams weren't preparing for a DH and likely using that roster spot on utility guy. Dodgers would just be scarier with a DH.

I would buy this but think about the numbers. If there were a few thousand infections over a month, the deaths would be in the dozens, and since California was smart and closed down early enough the late March spike was avoidable. Out of a state of what, 40 million, a few thousand infections is not any sort of widespread immunity. That was the idea challenged by this data - that somehow half the world would already be immune. A few thousand extra cases and a few dozen extra deaths changes the overall curves slightly but doesn’t change the evaluation of what worked and what didn’t. More worrisome is that it might mean there are more hard to identify clusters out there, and if we don’t give social distancing several months, then these hidden clusters will explode.

Further on the news diet topic, and related to COVID, another thing I like to do every so often is sift through some local papers' sites around the country. I just end up picking places I've lived or where I might have family or friends, so I end up reading the paper of record for cities like Des Moines, Denver, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Atlanta and Memphis. It gives a nice perspective on things, and a more nuanced national view than you get from just the Eastern Megalopolis papers. Pick your own cities' papers, but especially with COVID, it is fascinating to see how different areas are different/same as Chicago.

Absoluterly! Two solid catchers is a luxury under normal conditions. In this compressed season format... an absolute advantage.

In many ways a fun division to watch. Far better baseball to watch and great competition for our young guys to hone their skills against. It's a fact that competing at a higher level improves you own skills.

Oh...boy

And what antibiotics are used for

Yep. You won't hear me complaining if the Sox play the Dodgers 12 times. It's baseball and our guys are supposed to be developing this year anyway. What better way to take your shots then against a potential future World Series opponent.

I agree. I prefer these changes to no baseball at all.

This is a cool idea. It would be a nice change for a season. Maybe, if this happens, it will spur some discussion about realignment and rule changes going forward.

Following up, here's a good bit about less local news being terrible for democracy https://niemanreports.org/articles/less-local-news-means-less-democracy/ And then this https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/business/coronavirus-journalists-newspapers.html Thornton is behind the Texas Tribune. If every state were to get one of these to start (obviously places like California would need more), it goes a long way. There are even things like The Nevada Independent which is run by Jon Ralston, who is very pundit-y, but he's also very no bullshit and discloses every donation over $1 on their website and backs up his (strong) opinions with facts. Ok, I've derailed this thread from coronavirus enough.

It exists everywhere. Miami Herald reporting brought down Epstein and Sec. of Labor Alex Acosta. Reporting brought down EPA Dir. Scott Pruitt, HHS Sec. Tom Price, Act. Navy Sec. Modly (just the other day), Mike Flynn (before the Mueller probe reached him), Rob Porter, White House speechwriter David Sorensen. Kelly Loeffler is now facing a tough re-election because of reporting on her stock trading coinciding with her Senate hearings on COVID-19. Reporting from the Waington Post is why Roy Moore isn't in the US Senate. Journalists can put out the facts, but money needs to come from somewhere. I subscribe to a few papers and make sure to disable adblock for all news outlets. Outlets such as the Texas Tribune are popping up that are non-profit. The Salt Lake Trib is switching to that. But unfortunately, opinion often pays for fact reporting, because people don't subscribe or, thanks to Trump, will now just call all fact based journalism fake. The Chicago Tribune had a painfully accurate article on this back in 2014 that broke it down as "we want to churn out more of this, but this is what you want and we know because we have analytics." My own example is when I was an intern, I worked on two tech pieces. One was about a solar cell invented by an MIT researcher that stored energy using heat, which included an interview. 500k views. The other was about a Bluetooth, app controlled sex toy. 15m views. @Jack Parkman, you decided to lump everyone in the journalism industry top to bottom in this as if there's an Illuminati meeting held weekly. A vast majority of journalists hold truth paramount over profit. I could have gotten a job with a PAC, and from what my friends in the industry have told me, it probably would have been a solid $50k raise. That PAC is still in operation, because it was independent of the candidate's campaign. I'm lucky I have a good salary, but a lot of journalists that you lumped in make shit wages.

I agree with at least some of what Jack Parkman says, or at least I think I do. It is very hard to be a real independent journalist within the corporate structure today. Many reporters do not get to report what they may want to report. I am a journalist and have done a great deal of historical writing on the JFK assassination. I will tell you that no one who has a prestigious journalism job will even speculate that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. They won't have a career left if they do. I read an extensive biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover played a large role in the investigation of the John Kennedy murder. Yet, this book only devoted one page to the Hoover investigation, and it said next to nothing. I found out from a friend of the author that the author would never have gotten his book published if he tried to delve into the Hoover investigation of the assassination. Then the media went ga-ga over Bernie Sanders and his socialism. Most don't even know what socialism is. I swore they treated Sanders as if he were Stalin and the rest of the Democratic field ran for the hills. I'd like to know one thing: If capitalism is so great, why do so many people not have good health care? Chris Matthews was a big part of the political and corporate structure. Won't miss him.

Due to Covid-19, I wasn't able to be inside the vet's office when my cat was put down this week. It was painful enough having to say goodbye to her, but not being able to be with her when she passed is something I really regret. I completely understand the reasoning, it just sucks.

Lord knows the Padres would somehow become a thorn in our side, because they are our curse.

Def not a bad idea but for me personally just walking isn't enough. Need my gym endorphins. Not a jogger never have been. Might get into cycling a bit tho.

I have news ! I am using my Official 2005 World Series White Sox shot glasses a little more without baseball.

Jim - You might be right, but I think there are probably other industries / sectors that have been more severely battered who might be better long-term ploys. When you look at how devalued Oil is, LT, we still have major needs there and as long as you are staying away from those with heavy exposure to Shale, you will do good (I think). Just don't bet on one individual company, go more broad / be diversified. There are some strong financial giants who have been severely hit and are trading well below 08/09 crisis type returns (and they are extremely well capitalized to weather the storm, pay solid dividends, and generate good returns as the economy normalizes). And than on the infrastructure front, I think long term there are going to be some good investments in that sector. I would never worry about finding the bottom in times like this, rather try and do some dollar cost averaging while macro prices are low (as long as you can hold for the long). The volatility is not done and while I'm never certain, I would suspect we have more bad days to come. The economy is going to shrink 25% in the 2nd quarter and I think we are going to see pockets of reinfection during the course of 2020 (I hope not...but I suspect we will) and I don't know that current markets reflect those things. Pick and choose those sectors you like LT but low cost index funds aren't bad either (I always think betting on the LT economy of the US is the best bet you can make...because if we are wrong...well we got way bigger fish to fry). All that said, even if you buy today (and I think prices are probably headed more down near term than up...but I would have said that a week ago and have been dead wrong cause I didn't see this big of a dead cat bounce coming)...you are still getting a LT value when everything bounces up. I never worry of did I buy @ 30% down vs. 20% down. I'm just happy I got some of that down...because if you time a few of those in the general vicinity (and for me it is always about going in...more than timing the out because I always think you have more risk when you try and time the out...because at that point...you miss out on the LT of what the equities are going to do for your accumulation). An investor that sits on cash is inherently going to lose over the long-run (too many times will you false time a "bottom" and miss on extended gains which are necessary for the time you never see the bottom and take a pretty immediate 20-30% beating (and those just flat out will happen). All of this of course has to align with each individuals appetite for volatility and near term needs for the funds they are investing. The more near term needs you have, the much more different and risk averse your portfolio needs to be (but you also need to really challenge what those "near-term" needs are...because if you can better protect your near term than you can be more aggressive during scarier times and in the long-run, your retirement will thank you (This last bit is probably less advice for you Jim since you are much closer to retirement but where you have pensions / other guarantees those are things you have to contemplate when you evaluate your overall exposure to risk/equities...i.e., if you already can get 60-70% of your income covered through fixed streams, you may want to be more aggressive with your equity assets knowing you could bunker down and cut your spend/liquidity for 2-3 years (if things really good rough) for the long term good of your retirement portfolio. Also...I will have a counter to Mike's point on target date funds. If you aren't going to regularly check your 401k's, etc, a target date fund is absolutely better than what the general public will individual pick and manage to. Target dates outperform individuals 401k's by a large margin, so for some people, a target date fund is the absolute right investment choice (given their risk tolerances, knowledge of the markets, and appetite for trading on a more regular basis). Just look at the few of those funds. Vanguard has some really good, cost effective target date funds that are naturally going to manage your risks and shift exposures over time. And for those that think you should only be equities....a big reminder there is if you are inherently in equities vs. more mixed, you have very little downside buffer when the market bombs. Meaning...everything you had dropped...which is fine and it will return, but if you had some fixed income in there, you could actually leverage the safety and the lower drop you had and more strategically shift your portfolio into equities following that drop, generate higher returns on the bounce back, and than rebalance your portfolio. I.e., having some fixed income hedges some of your downside, while minimally chewing into your LT returns (if you do nothing), and, depending on your appetite, can help you be a buyer of discounted risk when times are tight. PS: None of the above constitutes as any financial advice. Everyone needs to analyze what is individually best for them, based upon their own financial perspective, short-term and long-term goals, and of course their risk appetites, etc.

And it's not that there aren't good content creators at CNN, MSNBC, even Fox. There are. And you're right that in certain breaking news scenarios they are better equipped to get on the ground and get out info quickly. And on the actual election nights I will watch CNN, plugging my ears through their painful panel discussions, because their provision of data as the night goes on is the best out there. So they serve a purpose, I just don't read them beyond those narrow needs.

As an Iowa alum, i am admittedly a bit prejudice, but I never understood the Bulls' fascination with Iowa State. First Floyd, then Fizer, then Gar, then Hoiberg. That's a big 0fer.

You say this, but on election night 2016, two of my fellow classmates were reporting on the local Republican watch party. They were a sophomore and junior in college, working for the local newspaper. People at the watch party started yelling at them for being there, then gloating saying "Trump is winning and the media is going to be sad." Then, when facts are reported, they're called lies. Literal facts. COVID-19 was declared a hoax to start because of Trump. Trump's own words will be read back to him, and he will deny them. If you can't split editorial and reporting, that's fine, but don't pretend like reporters that "just report the facts" get called liars for no reason other than people don't like the facts.

I’m not even sure that would have happened as quickly as it did without the twin shocks of the NBA and NCAA tourney cancellations that week of conference tourney play, with Rudy Gobert/Jazz being the first domino to fall. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/coronavirus-testing-cdc-fda-red-tape-invs/index.html (CNN) A weeks-long testing delay that effectively blinded public health officials to the spread of the coronavirus in the US might have been avoided had federal agencies fully enacted their own plan to ramp up testing during a national health crisis. The plan, which is spelled out in an April 2018 agreement between the Centers for Disease Control and three of the biggest associations involved in lab testing, called for boosting the capacity of public health labs, bringing big commercial labs into the testing process early, and making sure labs would have whatever they needed to mount a rapid, large-scale response. But over January and February, agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services not only failed to make early use of the hundreds of labs across the United States, they enforced regulatory roadblocks that prevented non-government labs from assisting, according to documents obtained by CNN, and interviews with 14 scientists and physicians at individual laboratories and national laboratory associations.

https://thebulwark.com/warnings-ignored-a-timeline-of-trumps-covid-19-response/ Fascinating.

My response is I don’t trust any of them. Just report the facts and let me form my own opinions.

Was never a big fan of his pairing with DJ but Ed will be missed. Listening to Rooney and Ed in the mid aughts was about as pure as it got for baseball on the radio.

Konerkos_grand_slam.mp3 I can think of no file that needs to be in this thread more.