gehringer_2

That's the thing, they can't get there, because the religious foundation of their abortion/IVF position starts from a point already at the limit. If 'Life beings at conception' is why you believe abortion should be regulated, you are immediately at: "Abortion needs to be totally banned." There is no logical method for how to get to a shaded view like R v W from that starting point.

Or anything else! Which puts me in mind of another question - which is that in 2016, Trump was making the argument that he was the guy who could stand up for the little guy against corporate America because he was from the inside and knew how to deal with them. At least to me at the time, that struck me as one of his more effective approaches, especially since the other 12 guys on the GOP primary podiums were all products of Paul Ryan/Ayn Rand philosophies. The 8 years since have certainly proven he is not and has never been interested in middle class economic development. So should that represent a slice of his 2020 electorate that he would have lost, or did that segment overlap too much with the MAGA culturalists for his failures on that score to matter?

All things being equal, I think that is a little too low a bar. You have a 26 man roster and players who stick will average maybe a 10 yr career, so the benchmark to keep turning over your roster is more like 2 - 2.5 players every year. If you want to be generous one of those could come from an international signing, and of course the Tigers have not done well there at all, which only exacerbated their lack of draft success in prior regimes. So I would say the benchmark should be a bench player, a starter, and an international on average per year. If you are below that you are probably losing ground. Now of course, all things are not equal, and if you are a team that would rather trade older high priced talent than keep it, then you can make a big dent in your draft needs.

ironically, they are not doing so great at their professed 'Job 1' of controlling the strike zone, sitting at 12th of 30 teams in walks allowed. TBF, they drop to above average at 18th if you drop out Lange's 5. 🤢

Against a LHP no less. Everything in Jung's stat line looks great except the 33% K rate.

also 13 goals in 24 game before Kane joined the team, 11 in the 52 games since. Maybe the coach should figure out that just because two guys played well together 5 yrs ago on a different team doesn't mean they are still the best pairing years later. Maybe in general not spending enough time with mixed and matched lines is part of why the loss of one guy and the line shifts it necessitated caused such a total breakdown?

The 1st Caps goal was such a cluster. Passing had gotten sloppy, Petry was gassed, couldn't get off because the Wings failed multiple times to clear - that goal was like a slow motion train wreck, you could see it and feel it coming. Then 99 yr old Ovechkin left Chariot with his hockey pants around his ankles to seal it.

I don't know why the Wings have switched away from their normal offensive style to start taking long shots. They look good in the SOG totals but that's not the Wings game, which all season has been to pass up on low percentage shots to keep moving the puck and get higher value chances.

A hockey team without Chiarot and Petry. I can only dream.

I just saw today's game off the DVR and Torkelson actually looked more in control, esp the 1st inning RBI he looked like he had decided up the middle all the way. Of course probably easier since Perez doesn't have a lot of velo, but a good sign none-the-less.

correct. The potential payoff for success is too great and every 20 yr old believes it will be the other guy.

Calipari walks away from Kentucky. It's amusing when the old kings of sleaze like Saban and Calipari find themselves at more disadvantage then they are willing to live with because the legal sleaze can now outpace what they used to do off the books.

And he gave up two GB hits. I can see why Hinch doesn't want to relay on him as a guy to call on with men on base, even if he might be the toughest guy in the BP to score on starting an inning clean. But if Hinch has any virtue as a manager, it certainly starts with his ability to fit the pieces of a bullpen together.

I tend to think there is a good hitter living inside Torkelson's skin but he has to get his head on straight with regard to his approach, and I really think the Tigers need to stop giving him too much to think about. Much like at the beginning of last season, Torkelson is in between too much, which is usually a symptom of thinking too much. Stop setting him up to be trying to outguess the pitcher, and just let him look for the ball. I have to say I am with Monroe on this. He says he hated pitcher scouting reports because it didn't matter if the guy did 'X' 90% of the time in 'Y' situation because he might just as easily know you know that and cross you up. IOW as long as pitch tendency data isn't absolute, it's value it pretty low in the real world. I would think any pitcher worth his salt, knowing that the tigers love to do deep tendency analytics, would absolutely come out and pitch against his tendencies, and I think we have seen a good number of games where that looked like it was happening.

bottom line is that it's pointless to even listen to what a compulsive liar says at any time about anything, because they've already proven that their words are worthless. But the pre-disposition to believe what people say is just to ingrained in the species and so many simply can't process that a liar's speech is nothing more than noise. I think that may be the most unique aspect of this particular age. Throughout much of the history of civilization public lying was generally severely punished. It was pretty much even in the US right up to Nixon. But somehow, possibly as the corollary to the explosion of voices produced by the digital age, maybe because it was impossible to hold *everyone* accountable, we just stopped holding *anyone* accountable to a standard of truth, and it's something that is destroying the ability of democracy to function. A public cannot vote without knowledge, and when everyone lies, there is no reliable knowledge, thus no remaining value in public decision making (i.e. voting).

"and if you go carrying pictures Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make with anyone anyhow......."

do you really want even more K's? The contradiction is that everyone and his brother wants more balls in play, but pitchers will move heaven and earth to keep balls out of play as long as any large percentage are likely to leave the yard. I don't think you can square that circle by tinkering with a corner here or there, you need to redraw the figure the way it was originally designed. The balance in the game evolved with a percentage of home runs lower than they are trying to play the game with now.

I can see this two ways: On one hand, a pretty obvious take, and I assume what you are thinking, is that moving away from a hard abortion stance could well hurt him with evangelical voters who are maybe are troubled by the rest of the Trump package but stay with him for the generally hard GOP position on abortion. But OTOH, if this is a part of some broader or coordinated (if anything about Trump is ever coordinated....) effort to move the whole GOP into less extreme water on abortion, maybe he's thinking that could get him the Presidency and a better GOP congressional result.

That's why I'm more bothered by the approach. But outside Torkelson, the fact is that here we are 9 games in the Tigers are 25th in OPB and OPS in MLB. It drives me back to my old theory: Tigers hitters have talked about how they don't get much scouting info in ST, they just hit, so maybe the Tigers overload the guys once the season starts and it knocks them off balance - they all end up tentative until they re-establish their individual equilibrium. It's just a theory but how many slow starts do we have to see before probability tells us it can't be an accident.

True, but whatever the reason, it was the first time I'd seem them on the ice together. The one thing that Edvinsson's handling seems to say is that Yzerman is more serious about player development than the Wing's short term win total. To me it's clear Edvinsson would have improved this team if he had been called up well before he was - I can only conclude he wasn't because he hadn't hit some targets they had established for him in GR and that was judged to be more important. Or maybe just more important until it began to look the wings might actually miss the playoff.

TBF, the specification on the ball was wide enough to begin with that all that had to happen was for the manufacturer get tighter control on the winding and operate at the higher end of the tension range. The spec never had to change, all that had to happen was fewer balls at the soft end and more balls at the hard end of the spectrum.

Seider and Edvinsson on the ice together at crunch time against the 6 on 5 - a first?

Torkelson has been a total disappointment far, not so much even the results but that he is doing exactly the opposite of what he needed to do this season, which was become a better hitter - higher OBP, a tougher out with men on base. Instead he has gone completely the other way, swinging out of his shoes, pulling everything, making a ton of outs. The sell out for the long ball may get him 30HR in the end but he'll just turn himself into Rob Deer with a buzz cut.

looks like they might have covered the heating bill....

Iran's security control of its eastern regions looking a little sketch.