gehringer_2

Team has played well enough over the last couple of months that 11 of the remaining 18 would be my baseline expectation. If they can steal an extra 2 or 3 more than that, it should get very interesting.

Is your median politician a mean politician, or are some of them nice guys?

This is true, but it's become a distinction without a difference given that all most all major spending bills in recent history emerge in the end from a House/Senate conference committee. The House can start a bill to fund DC dog catchers and it can turn into the annual omnibus appropriation bill by the time all is said and done.

Along those lines, maybe the best thing that could happen if he gets re-elected is for him to be diagnosed with a moderately slowly developing form of cancer. NIH would see its funding go through the roof.

BTW from the department of stupid scale numbers: A 50 basis pt reduction in interest rates reduces the government's cost of debt service by half a billion dollars per day .

really good point. I can't tell you how many engineering database systems I've seen full of landmines because the data mining of the original sources made errors. Always tried to get access to original data to see what the data concatenator was really doing.

actually the price that matter most of all is gasoline, and from what I've read of what's going on in OPEC right now there is a fighting chance gasoline is going to be below $3.25 this fall. That won't hurt.

Burned out for the day with the Michigan butt kicking. I'll watch this one after the fact if they win....

we don't know what limitations were or were not made on the resources made available. No sense to go shopping if your spending account isn't up to it. I'll let Buddha accuse me of being cynical again () but think about it: If you are Michigan, coming off the NC you have sold every ticket you have, peddled every piece of merch you could think of, why spend money this year on players - your profits are already booked. Save it and make a bigger splash next yr or when you sense ticket sales may be looking weaker. Until some new rules are in place it's all year by year now with players anyway. The institution has a much longer-term view about sports than the fans. Manuel's primary task is long term economic success. Winning alone isn't justification for spending any money that isn't going to have a net return.

Yeah - when I say you can't have him in the lineup in Det if he doesn't produce that doesn't mean they necessarily have to move him, but the comments above about his low trade value are spot on. Still, if he gets sent to AAA again his chances of a career in Det are probably over because they will have filled his spot with someone else.

Speaking of the Gen X'ers. In the life cycle arc, they are at the age of maximum economic conservatism so in general would be moving toward the most anti-tax platforms. But here I think Trump is making a big mistake with his tariff talk, because that is basically a break all the china and re-arrange it proposal and thus is going to run counter the economic conservatism of his natural constituencies. They hate taxes but they are also most afraid of change that might upset their apple carts. Could be one reason the Ds are closing the gap on the 'Who do you trust on the economy' question.

The thing that amazes me is that I'm still seeing some writers who think high turnout will benefit Trump more. That just feels so counter-factual I can't buy it. On the D side you may be pulling traditionally under voted parts of the population into the voting process in minority women, Hispanics and young voters, plus the general 4 yr demographic shift. Who could Trump possibly be pulling in who he didn't already have? What deep repository of White Males would suddenly be more energized about him than when he 1st hit the scene and why? The GenX'ers suddenly becoming more radically GOP? I don't think there is any reasonable answer to that question.

well. they did score a TD. Warren isn't even their biggest problem.

I think the answer is none. It doesn't change anything your are doing and you don't really even need to acknowledge it in particular other than making the general observation that Trump has lost support from people in both his own and previous GOP admins. If you are asked about Richard Cheney in particular you just say, "We have a lot of disagreements with him but if he has moved in our direction wrt Trump, that is one less."

I hope you are right and I'd love to believe it, but a blowout record election turn-out for this country is 150 Million votes. While I agree there are indeed many millions who are not paying attention, I'm afraid they are just going to continue to not pay attention because half of American's just don't vote, and that's who that half are. Harris is bringing a lot of new young voters and charged up women in, they are already paying attention and registering now. Best hope is that that is something the polling is largely missing because those kinds of model adjustments probably are not often done on the fly - only after the cycle.

If he can stay healthy and get consistent starts maybe his command will finally get good. He'll get to maybe 115 IP (including Toledo). i wonder if that will be considered enough that he won't be under any innings limitation next season.

Hinch certainly knows it, but maybe Jim Leyland should have taught us that managers look at their teams a little differently than fans do. If you have a losing player, don't expect a manager to not use him if he's on the roster, it's up to the GM to make the change.

he is still at 800 OPS since his return but has had a bad week, going 1 for SanDiego and 0/5 last night. If he finishes the season still at 800 from Aug forward, that's one thing. But if he ends up back at a 650 OPS you really can't afford to have a RH bat that weak in at 1B with a LH heavy lineup. It's just terrible roster construction. He has to start performing consistently.

one of the things this season will prove is that JJ was a really good college QB.

Michigan defensive players are diving at people - they better be careful they don't draw a targeting call.

21 yrs since Martindale last coached in college.

you think he gets 4 yrs? I think he's in the Alan Trammell role here. Someone loved enough to dampen fan dissatisfaction while not being supplied the resources to compete. My theory is that once they won it all last season they figured that would take the pressure off for a couple of years and they could just sort of coast along waiting to see how things shake out with the future of the game without committing a lot of resources anything that might change anyway. Not doing a big search for a coach, no big push (meaning $$) into the portal or recruiting.

Make that a Flemmish Giant Hare.

Morgan - not very good.

moral victory?