gehringer_2

a temporary blow for sanity I guess.

the NBA is messed up. The team the Pistons have put on the floor the last few nights should not be undefeated. Sure it's fun as a fan, but you can't take what we are seeing seriously.

Good point. If you are going past 1 sig fig you ought to also add the C.I. 🤔

to be accurate, this is not Voter fraud (fraud by a voter), it's Election fraud (an attempt by Candidates or other people in the system to rig an election). They are two different things. There is even a thread here somewhere about the difference. You can certainly try to put individual voters up to voter fraud as part of an election fraud scheme, but that part still wouldn't be an effective strategy. Voter ID isn't an election fraud remedy either. I don't think anyone here has ever said they don't worry about election fraud - esp with the current crop of GOP crazies.

she got a point there. This is like the "the Emperor has no Clothes" moment in the story where no-one wants to admit the obvious truth that public universities have absolutely no business running professional sports teams. If they are going to turn collegiate sports into profit making ventures - which given the interest of private equity seems a pretty incontrovertible fact, then they damn well ought to pay taxes

It's a fairly apt metaphor, but the difference is that your house being broken into isn't a matter of Constitutional rights (granted that's cold comfort if it happens to you, but it is what it is 😉 ), so Constitutional practice demands that there be a actual showing of need before *any* burden is imposed, and for my money the SCOTUS has just been plain been wrong on this issue in letting any state require it - and certainly in any absence of a positive mandate that the state undertake provision of ID to everyone. But in the grand scheme of things to me it's not the hill to die on that something like Gerrymandering or CU are (and that CU should be to more people.)

Because showing ID has little to do with it. Your precinct has a voter role. You sign your voter application - they match you to an entry from the voter registration role, you vote. If someone else tries to show up using your name - it's immedately obvious something was wrong, if you show up and someone has tried to use your name already - just as obvious. No official ID required for the system to check itself. You don't get to vote by proving who you are on Election Day, you get to vote because you are registered. There is little need for any system of proof beyond the person's attestation because impersonating other people is just not an effective form of voter fraud. What few cases of voter fraud there are come mostly from people registering where or when they are not legal voters. ID at the poll gets you nowhere against that if the person is already on the rolls but shouldn't be.

FEMA under Trump is its own biggest disaster.

Already bored with the new wife?

It's a funny thing though, it certainly is true that good fielders are a dime a dozen compared to good hitters, but just because that is true, we (well at least 'I'..😉) tend to think they should be more common than they are -- so I'm always a bit surprised when a minor leaguer with a weak bat or a utility guy gets called up and their glove is only mediocre at best. If you don't have a big bat and can't field how do you even get to AAA? 🤷‍♂️

you've probably figured over the years that I'm not too much a doomsayer - but I have to agree this is getting really nuts.

no arg on that.

I'd only been commuting to Toledo for a short time when the shipping traffic stopped and the bridge was pretty much always down - so watched the new bridge go up behind schedule, overbudget, and with a major construction collapse disaster with few worker deaths added in, I remember they built a cement/fab plant a bit to the east of the bridge site where they cast the sections. I don't remember what I use to have to go over there for, but if you got stuck behind one of the ~30 axle flatbeds they used for moving the sections to the river you might as well have your lunch.

exactly - but do we see any movement in that direction? RIght now it still looks like the plan most places is to try the climb out of the whole on the heap of all the other corpses......

the round settee looks like an '70 Cray supercomputer with the center hardware tower taken out. -

I like that. For me it just goes back the idea that I find it nonsensical for an above average defender at any position to be considered as having cost his team runs/wins. That part is only a matter of the semantics of what the unit is called. If you are going to call it Wins above replacement, than no above average D player at any position should be rated as costing his team wins, because they didn't in any reasonable sense. He may not field like a SS, but his contribution was not negative. So if you call it something else that goes away. 😉

actually, I'll answer my own question. There is one case where the voter bringing in an ID, particularly a machine readable one like an MDL, is if you have a precinct with 5 guys named Joe Smith. That's a case were the particular ID, tied to some other unique identifier like an MDL# serves a legitimate use in administering the election and insuring the Joe Smith #3 doesn't get to polls only to be told he has already voted because a poll worker entered Joe Smith #2 as having voted at Joe Smith #3. Now it that enough justify the burden on every voter? Obviously SCOTUS has said yes because they haven't overturned the requirement anywhere. Personally, I'd say you can get the same result if ID is optional and you advise people with really common names that they are the best served if they bring ID if they have it, without burdening everyone. In MI ID is requested but you can get a provisional ballot if you don't have it. That's not a terrible compromise.

well, you tell me. Since most states get by perfectly well without it and voter fraud is virtually non-existent in any state, who put it in place and why? Just a bunch of petty bureaucrats who think dotted i's need be dotted better? If so they need to get over themselves. If not that, any alternative explanation says something less attractive....

'Permanently' until the end of the season? /..sigh../ There are many adverbs that might describe "till the end of the season". One thing that is permanent is that permanently isn't one of them! 🙄

your point is valid that in the abstract, everyone needs to learn to be a responsible citizen regardless of their economic or racial circumstances. The question is whether constructing hurdles to voting that have no other factually supportable purpose than to be hurdles is even a remotely good or effective way to this.

yeah - that's just the thing - we want the rookie that doesn't suck - because that means he might be the kind of impact player they need so desperately. TBF - In the Yzerman era we have had a couple of rookies that didn't suck in Sieder, Raymond and maybe even count Edvinsson.

If you think about it, why would they? Nobody teaches anyone to drive at anything more than the minimum level. Driver's ed schools are far more interested in getting their students licensed a easily as possible than undertaking any of the cost or risk associated with actually teaching them to drive well. Unless you had a parent who demanded you learn to do more than the absolute minimum behind the wheel, or grew up in a teenage performance car sub cohort (increasingly rare) where you self taught some higher level of car handling, or even more rarely got sent to a higher level driving school by your employer, I don't know that one can fairly expect the average American driver to be better.

I think one thing that comes out of all this that if the adjustments reflect an underlying reality, team should be probably be looking at upgrading their fielding at a position like 1B. Maybe it's the next unexploited efficiency! I suppose a traditionalist might argue that if fielding were 'really' more important at 1B teams would have already discovered that, but considering the history of bunting, one should never underestimate the ability of the major leagues to get it wrong for decades on end.....

What is missing is the profit guarantee. I don't mean this facetiously. In the NFL, teams have a revenue base and a salary cap and know set of expenses and if they manage with even a half ounce of brains, the franchise is guaranteed a positive return. Right now there is nothing like that in College football. There seems to be no cap on costs, revenue distributions are all up in air - it's a mess.

And the big hope at forward is now here and not really creating any discernible presence on the ice. Not to mention the other big add this season, ASP, spent the game being manhandled like a rag doll by the Sabres.