Jake

It was such a confusing play that it made sense to give him explanation, but it didn't take long before it became clear he was just killing time out there

The national polls don't mean anything anyway. The primary process is very undemocratic. Of course, Trump is winning each of the first three primary states, too... Then again, these things have a tendency to change a lot before the elections. Here's a quick blow-by-blow of national GOP polling from 2012 nomination fight. Romney leads early, until September, hovering around 20-25%. In September, Rick Perry surges to 30+%. He falls and in October Herman Cain takes the lead with 25-27%. He falls and by mid-December Newt Gingrich is leading with 35%. Once the actual voting starts in January, Romney and Gingrich go back and forth a few times. By mid-February, Gingrich has fallen out of favor and Rick Santorum takes Romney's brief lead, Santorum getting about 35%. It's not until March that Romney gets the lead and keeps it as much of the rest of his competition drops out of the race.

The beautiful thing about talent is that you can't measure it so you can say pretty much whatever you want about it

"Meeting at the mind of the mounds"

Conor taketh, Conor giveth away

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 12, 2015 -> 07:32 PM) If you delve a little deeper into his stats than this article it becomes even more confusing. Yes, his GB% age is way down, but what counters that is not hard-hit balls or line drives, it's fly balls, specifically a certain type of fly ball that you don't want to hit. His Fly Ball rate has gone up by 8% and his infield popup rate has gone up by 7% - so almost all of the additional fly balls he's hitting are popups. He's not noticeably pulling the ball any more, he's not noticeably hitting more balls hard, he is hitting slightly more line drives (2%) but not nearly as big as the change in fly balls. Basically Adam Eaton is popping the ball up a lot more. He's getting vastly fewer groundball and infield hits, those ground balls are now turning into popups. However one thing is offsetting that - he hit HR on only 1% of his fly balls last year. This year his HR/FB rate has gone from an insanely low 1% to a much more normal for baseball players 9%. Eaton is actually doing fewer good things with the bat...popping the ball up weakly more and hitting fewer ground balls that could turn into hits....except for he's suddenly showing the power of a normal hitter and additional power is really good. So, batting average down, OBP down, but almost the same overall hitter because he's hitting with a more normal amount of power. The question remaining is...how much of that is sustainable. If he keeps this higher rate of IF popups and his HR rate drops somewhat next year...then he really hurts his game. If he could keep this rate of HR/FB and cut that rate of IF popups back down, then he could become an exceptional player again. I can help solve one part of this mystery. IFFB% is popups as a percentage of fly balls, not all batted balls. A little deceptive given the way it is presented alongside a bunch of other percentages using total batted balls as denominator.

I think their pitching staff could very realistically let them down in the stretch run. 1 and 2 are top notch in the rotation, but there is no guaranteeing they get great production from 3-5. Rondon and Grimm are pretty much nails but neither is experienced as a closer and they are fairly soft beyond those two. Their success can be mostly attributed to the pitching staff but it isn't exactly loaded with talent nor is it loaded with guys that have track records of consistent performance. With that said, they're all on fire right now.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 12, 2015 -> 01:51 PM) I see. I don't really concern myself with things that don't affect me when it comes to this incident. Obviously there is some interest to the story, but ultimately, this impacts me in one way: how will it affect my enjoyment of watching the Blackhawks. For the vast majority of fans, the impact on the Blackhawks, is, in my opinion, the most pertinent outcome of this incident. I'm not trying to make myself out as some special person who is interested in this story because I have an uncommon level of empathy/concern/whatever. I am paying attention to this particular allegation because I have always liked Patrick Kane and, moreso, the Blackhawks. I don't want to pretend this isn't because of the Blackhawks. I care about these issues in general, for sure, but I can't possibly follow every investigation that happens. But my enjoyment of the Blackhawks is very much related to the amount of rapists on the ice for them. I don't want to be fanatical about the most obviously morally dubious people (I put it that way since I can't expect everyone to be a great person nor can I reasonably police every aspect of their lives).

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 12, 2015 -> 12:43 PM) The last sentence is interesting to me. Why is what happened "more pertinent?" Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, there is just the issue of putting the cart before the horse. Talking about the salary cap is leaping ahead of several mysteries: what happened that night, what will come of the legal side of things, and what the league or team will do. All of those things depend on one another. Knowing more about what happened will give insight into each of the following steps in the process and is probably the order in which we find out. At this point, our speculation about Kane's contract will have as much structural integrity as a house of cards. The second reason is the moral decision-making we have to do. The legal outcome of the investigation will of course be in large part determined by "the truth," but we know through experience that there is nothing nearing a guarantee that justice is done. That's just how the world works, for better or worse. The legal system tries to err on the side of innocence, procedural minutiae can become big factors, and there is of course the looming potential for a settlement that can be an attempt to hide the facts from view. One of my priorities as a fan is to be able to figure out what I think of this situation so I can interpret developments properly. If I think Kane is victim to a shakedown, I'm not going to support punishment. If I think Kane is a criminal, I'll be upset if he is unpunished.

I think it's fair to wonder what's going to happen to the Blachawks, but it's important to keep things in perspective. The more you focus on how the case affects your hobby, the more you may develop a rooting interest that is unrelated to what the right outcome is. You can follow it from a Blackhawks-centric point of view without letting that happen, but you have to be cognizant of it. As a fan, I hope Patrick didn't rape anybody and that this is somehow a misunderstanding. That's good for the Blackhawks goose and good for the society gander. What I don't want to do is in any way enable a rapist to go unpunished because I want my favorite hockey team to have one of its best players. I have to consciously remind myself that I am biased in favor of Patrick because I want to root for the Blackhawks without experiencing cognitive dissonance. When the Sox traded for Brett Myers, I had to struggle to figure out if I was seeing his domestic violence situation in a very nuanced way because that's how it really was or if it was because I wanted to be able to cheer for him. There's a reason things like the Ray Rice situation developed some level of consensus. Once we saw him punch his fiance, even people who liked Ray Rice couldn't pretend that he didn't punch her. There were obviously a small group of people who don't give a damn whether he punches somebody, but for reasonable people there wasn't any room for interpretation. Well Patrick wasn't on tape as far as we know so I have to battle the fact that my mind will want to imagine him doing no wrong or at least less wrong than what he may be alleged to have done. So if months from now we're looking at a certain rape conviction for Kane, I'll be intensely interested in the contractual and cap implications. For now, I'm not uninterested in those topics but there are more pertinent things, like finding out what actually happened.

Rubio has a quality that is hard to teach: his general manner doesn't reek of a crazy person. This is an important quality, because people are going to forget almost everything that you say, but they'll still have a general impression of you.

Greg is seriously one of the best parts of this website

QUOTE (SouthSideSale @ Aug 10, 2015 -> 12:15 AM) I'm not real familiar with how different each level is so someone will correct me. But I'm guessing there's a bit of a gap with AAA because you have some vets there, guys repeating it and top prospects up there. Just my two cents. The fact that many good prospects struggle in AAA at first despite doing well in AA tells me it's a better brand of ball

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 9, 2015 -> 04:16 PM) Well except for the bar owner The bar owner, if we assume he's being honest (and, I mean, maybe he isn't) just says he saw a girl clinging to Patrick at the bar. Plausible stuff. He even makes a point to say that his viewpoint isn't very useful considering where the crime is alleged to have taken place.

A former Ron Paul campaign staffer who is already facing charges for allegedly buying the support of an Iowa state senator is now under investigation in connection with a rather odd burglary. The man under fire for both the bribery and the robbery is named Dimitri Kesari and he was Deputy Campaign Manager for Ron Paul's 2012 campaign. He's been active elsewhere too, being involved with National Right to Work and for Mitch McConnell's most recent Senate campaign. This is to say that he's not just a Ron Paul guy, more of just a person trying to make a living in conservative politics. He is one of several who worked for Ron Paul's 2012 campaign who seem to have paid the aforementioned Iowa state senator named Kent Sorenson something like $70,000 in exchange for him switching his endorsement. The specifics of that case aren't so interesting beyond the fact that it's clear Sorenson accepted a big payment to cast his delegate vote for Paul after possibly having also taken money from the Bachmann campaign. There's this other fellow named Jared Gamble, who also spent a lot of time at NRTW and worked in a smaller role than Kesari in the Paul 2012 and 2008 campaigns. He also worked for Kent Sorenson (the corrupt now-former Iowa state senator who took a bribe from the Paul campaign) in Sorenson's 2008 campaign and volunteered in some capacity for Rand Paul's campaign in 2010. He died in 2013 of causes that are unclear. His obit doesn't mention it, multiple tributes from Ron and Rand Paul don't say anything about it, and I've seen just a few nuggets about it on the web. I'll get back to that later. Anyway, Jared Gamble's family was taken on vacation at some point in 2014 by unnamed people who are said to be people in the libertarian establishment that knew the kid. While the Gamble family was away, their house was burglarized. Just one item was taken: Jared's (presumably) out-of-use laptop. Well...that's a bit suspicious, ain't it? It sure seems like someone specifically arranged to get the family out of there so they could get rid of (or maybe just learn from?) this laptop. It's unclear what law enforcement has on Kesari to implicate him, but it is more than plausible there could be evidence of Kesari's role in the bribery or even other things on that computer. It could have something to do with what Lee Stranahan, a longtime Breitbart reporter, has been writing about for a while. The gist of it is that via leaked emails, some of which are written by Gamble, Stranahan says there is evidence that NRTW was illegally doing campaign work on behalf of various politicians. When Rand Paul posted a tribute video to Gamble that is introduced by Sorenson who mentions Gamble's work for him at specific times, it was quickly pulled down which caught Stranahan's attention; he thinks it could be because Sorenson inadvertently admitted to employing Gamble at a time where he could not have legally have done so due to Gamble's concurrent work with NRTW, a lobbying group. I don't know about that, but there seems to be something to the NRTW emails. And no surprise, Kesari also worked for both Paul and NRTW so he could potentially have something to lose there. That Gamble's death happened suddenly and was unexpected has been repeated by people close to him. Robert Wenzel, a libertarian columnist/radio host/blogger, said in passing that Gamble died of "unspecified respiratory complications." What appears to be an earlier version of that post shared on a libertarian discussion site says instead that Gamble died from AIDS. That could be why there isn't much talk about it, but it would be strange that it would be so unexpected. Anyway, I'm going to assume that there's no smoking gun in regards to how Gamble died. Also, let's all take a second and think about what a big f***up this Sorenson guy is, who apparently can't open his mouth without also taking a bribe and/or admitting to having done something illegal.

One thing that Kane's people have done so far is not start a smear campaign against the accuser, at least not yet. If you're in the right, take the high road and let the facts present themselves

29 US scientists from the fields of nuclear physics and arms control praise Iran agreement, emphasizing its "innovative" and "stringent" nature. Signatories include 5 Nobel Laureates, the head of the AAAS, former director of Los Alamos weapons lab, the designer of the world's first H-bomb, and almost all of whom have had government Q clearances in the past.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 11:39 AM) It's more like a reverse parole system, they can extend the sentence indefinitely Is it basically just reversing the burden of proof? Assume the person is rehabilitated unless the state can prove differently?

I actually wonder if we as a country may end up electing, ever so incrementally, to get rid of the death penalty. A lot more states have been doing away with it or de facto banning it by never using it.

QUOTE (LDF @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 04:16 PM) find it, b/c a lot of time the victims gets really embarrass on this and drops the charges. More often they don't speak up at all because they fear the repercussions, reliving the trauma with the police/courts, and many times feel so ashamed that they spend time believing that it was all their own fault

Also worth noting that the most influential gun advocates dislike most forms of control over who can buy and carry and under what conditions. I have fairly little confidence that a person concealed carrying is competent at anything beyond not accidentally shooting themselves when they holster their weapon before going out in the morning. It's not exactly easy to just sit in a day-long class and walk away with a cool head under pressure and sure aim in a volatile situation.

I think Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace's are FOX's best talent and they did a pretty good job. Only clunker of a question was the "word from God" bit, which Kelly clearly thought was stupid as well as she laughed her way through it and started tacking on extra topics as she went on.

QUOTE (beautox @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 12:56 AM) grantland did a nice piece a while ago about their core here they've got 57M coming off the books going into next year so it'll be intresting to see where all that money gets alocated. As someone rooting against the Cubs, there's nothing better than giving Theo Epstein money with the expectation that he spends it in large chunks on free agents

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Aug 7, 2015 -> 02:06 PM) Huh? I was talking about the impending legal case. WIth alcohol and little to no physical evidence the cases almost always get thrown out. There are lots of jurisdictions where a drunk victim is itself sufficient evidence. If the victim is past some threshold of drunkenness (some places it is 0.08, others a fuzzier standard, others there is no consideration given), the sexual aggressor whether drunk him or herself or not is held accountable for having sex with someone who cannot provide consent. You would presumably still have to convince a court that victim was not the one initiating the encounter, though. According to this website, it would seem that would not apply in New York as alcohol could facilitate date rape there but apparently only if alcohol was provided w/o consent (unclear how you'd go about doing that).

I always figured Soto was a steroid guy with his strange statistical fluctuations and quick dropoff of productivity