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Pests, Diseases and Weeds
Animal pests and diseases
Avian Influenza or Bird Flu
Global avian influenza outbreak situation update
Bird biosecurity
Global avian influenza outbreak situation updateCurrently selected
Information for recreational shooters
The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is aware of the multiple outbreaks worldwide of H5 related highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses in poultry. These outbreaks have resulted from a new H5N8 strain of the virus that emerged in poultry and many wild bird species in Asia in 2014. They include:
H5N1 in China and Vietnam
H5N2 in North America and Taiwan
H5N6 in China, Laos and Vietnam
H5N8 in China, Europe, Japan, North America, South Korea and Taiwan.
These viruses are not known to easily cause disease in humans, however a small number of people infected with H5N6 have been reported in China since late 2014.
The multiple H5N2 and H5N8 HPAI outbreaks in commercial and backyard poultry flocks worldwide have serious socioeconomic and animal health impacts. The current outbreak in the United States alone has been confirmed in more than 46 million birds with HPAI.
Information about the situation in the United States is available on the US Department of Agriculture website, while further information on the global HPAI situation is available on the World Organisation for Animal Health website.
Australia’s chief veterinary officer has been in contact with Australian poultry groups to keep them aware of the current avian influenza situation.
Avian influenza and risks to Australia
It is not uncommon for wild birds in Australia or migratory birds coming to Australia to carry low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI).
Australia has previously had outbreaks of avian influenza in commercial poultry – all of which were successfully eradicated. These outbreaks were not caused by the strains that have recently emerged and are currently causing concern in the United States and Asia.
While the likelihood of these overseas H5 HPAI viruses entering and becoming established in Australia is low, it is a timely reminder that all bird owners and poultry producers put good biosecurity measures in place to prevent avian influenza, and other endemic diseases, in their birds.
Good biosecurity to protect your birds
Observations from the United States have seen huge difficulties in eradicating and controlling the spread of the viruses in commercial flocks.
Good biosecurity practices are the key to preventing the spread of avian influenza in poultry species and are critical in combating any incursion.
Poultry producers should review and enhance their biosecurity plans and practices, particularly those around preventing contact with wild birds (including through poultry drinking water, as wild bird contact with water for poultry is a known path for avian influenza virus transmission).
National Farm Biosecurity Manual – Poultry Production
Other bird owners (with pet, show or racing birds) also need to practice good biosecurity. See the bird biosecurity page for simple tips on preventing avian influenza and other diseases in your birds.
Importantly, if your birds are showing signs of disease or you see large numbers of dead birds, report it to the Emergency Animal Disease Watch Hotline on 1800 675 888.
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Amalgamated Printers' Association
…AN ORGANIZATION COMPOSED OF LETTERPRESS PRINTING ENTHUSIASTS
About The APA
APA Historical Pages
How The APA Was Named
Early APA History
Previous Wayzgoose Cities
Annual APA Wayzgoose Info
Amalgamated Printers’ Association
(Last revision on March 2006)
Article I / General
Article II / Membership
Article III / Activities
Article IV / Printing Specifications
Article V / Official Business
Article VI / Elections
Article VII / Officers, Board, Terms & Tenure
Article VIII / Duties of Board Members
Article IX / Amendments to the Rules
Article I: General
The name of the organization is Amalgamated Printers’ Association, abbreviated APA.
The purposes of APA are:
To foster interest in the art of letterpress printing.
To encourage excellence in printing.
To provide a means for collective exchange of members work, promoting mutual communication and improvement of skills.
Article II: Membership
Membership is limited to 150.
A partnership of two or more qualified persons at the same address may choose to be recognized as a single membership, provided they so advise the Secretary-Treasurer. In case of death of one partner, membership reverts to the surviving partner(s).
Qualifications for membership are an interest in printing as a hobby, possession of or access to letterpress printing equipment, and a working knowledge of letterpress printing.
Induction:
A candidate for membership may apply to the Secretary-Treasurer. The application must be endorsed by a sponsor who has been an APA member in good standing for the last two years, and must be accompanied by a specimen of the candidate’s letterpress printing.
A waiting list of applicants shall be maintained by the Secretary-Treasurer, and qualifying candidates shall be inducted in order of application.
A candidate shall be notified when his name reaches the top of the waiting list and a vacancy occurs, and invited to join by remitting dues, which at the discretion of the Secretary-Treasurer may be pro-rated.
Permanent membership numbers shall be consecutively assigned to all members at the time of induction. If a previous member rejoins, the original number shall be used by that member.
Upon acceptance of dues copies of the APA Constitution and Membership Directory shall be sent to the new member, and the sponsor shall be notified.
A new member is on probationary status until he prints a Proprietor’s Card for distribution in the Bundle, which must be done within three months of acceptance. It is encouraged that this include a brief introduction of the member, relating qualifications, background and shop information.
Dues:
Annual dues shall be in an amount determined by the Board. Members living outside the United States are asked to voluntarily contribute more than their dues to offset the extra postage in mailing their bundles.
Renewal notices shall be distributed annually in the January Bundle, with dues payable by March 1.
The Vice President shall attempt to personally contact any member delinquent as of March 15. The Secretary-Treasurer shall terminate by written notice any member delinquent as of April 1.
Participation:
All members shall actively participate in APA by publication of at least four separate and different letterpress printed items per calendar year for distribution in the Bundle. Members may not submit more than two pieces for the December bundle.
Each letterpress-printed contribution to Treasure Gems may be counted toward this requirement, provided that Treasure Gems is distributed to all members. If Treasure Gems is not distributed to all members, only one such contribution may be counted toward this requirement.
Items produced as joint ventures shall be counted at half-credit for each participant.
Items produced by a partnership shall be counted as if the partners were a single member.
At the discretion of the board member responsible for checking participation, publications with multiple sheets bound together may be counted as more than one item.
In the event a member in good standing suffers a disability or other hardship, a written request for waiver of the required participation may be filed with the Vice President. If he and the President agree, a waiver may be granted for the current calendar year only, after which the member may reapply.
Members shall receive the monthly Bundle.
Subject to specific registration and fees, members are entitled to participate in all APA activities.
Article III: Activities
The Bundle is a packet mailed monthly to all members for the collective exchange of printing specimens. It may also contain announcements, reports, ballots, and other official business or unofficial items submitted by members for the general interest.
Treasure Gems is a cooperative book published annually in May, containing works of members contributed on a voluntary basis. It is coordinated by a volunteer member other than the Mailer.
The Wayzgoose is an informal annual convention held on a summer weekend and coordinated by a volunteer host financially responsible only to those who register and attend.
Other activities such as cooperative calendars, contests, field trips, newsletters, keepsakes, awards, etc., may be initiated by any member.
Article IV: Printing Specifications
Except for educational materials approved by the Vice President or official business, members are required to only submit letterpress-printed pieces for the bundle.
Variable dimensions, thickness or weight of stock in one item is discouraged.
Items sent to the Mailer shall be suitably packed, and marked to indicate intended distribution if other than the current month.
Items requiring folding, binding, or similar operations shall be so serviced before shipment to the Mailer.
Identification and contents:
Each piece submitted for distribution shall clearly indicate the name of the member who printed and/or contributed it. Neither the name of the press nor the assigned APA number constitutes the name of the member, but such further identification is encouraged.
In the spirit of the free press, there are no restrictions to subject matter, but APA is not intended as a forum for material of inflammatory or controversial nature.
Should the propriety of an item be questioned, the Mailer shall withhold distribution of it and refer the matter to the Vice President, who shall render a decision with due promptness.
Proprietor’s Card:
Each member shall print a 3″x5″ Proprietor’s Card for distribution to other members, with the following format recommended:
Name of member in the upper left hand corner with the last name first.
Assigned APA number, name of press, mailing address, telephone number, and salient facts about member’s interests and equipment.
Month and year the member joined APA in the lower right corner.
A. Month and year the Proprietor’s card was issued, reissued or revised in the lower right corner.
When new members join APA, each member is requested to welcome them by mailing a Proprietor’s Card.
Members are encouraged to reissue Proprietor’s Cards occasionally, especially in case of significant changes.
Monthly Bundle:
For a regular Bundle, items shall not exceed 6″x9″ flat, or 5.5″x8.5 folded.
For the special November Bundle, items shall not exceed 8.5″x11″ flat, or 8″x10″ folded.
Members shall furnish 155 copies to the Mailer of each item intended for Bundle distribution.
Except for official association notices or variances approved by the Vice President, all items submitted for the bundle must be printed via the letterpress process.
Treasure Gems
Items submitted for publication in Treasure Gems shall be 4.5″x6,” preferably printed both sides, and sent to the special coordinator, not the Mailer.
Use of stock thicker or heavier than text grade is discouraged.
Deadlines and particulars shall be published in the Bundle by the coordinator as appropriate.
Article V: Official Business
Items of official business may be printed by any Board member, or any lay member or outside source duly designated by a Board member.
Costs of paper, binding, typesetting, shipping or similar services performed within or outside APA membership on official business may be borne by APA funds. Such expenditures must be approved by the President.
Reimbursement for personal labor, consultation, coordination, travel, or similar expenses to any Officer or member from APA funds is strictly prohibited.
A fee determined by the Board of Directors shall be paid to each of the Secretary-Treasurer and the Mailer, over and above itemized expenses, to cover incidental costs.
Article VI: Elections
Nominations shall be by petition from the candidate seeking office. The Petition must be endorsed by another member in good standing for the last two years. The Petition shall be submitted to the Secretary-Treasurer by August 1 of even numbered years.
Balloting is by mail in duplicate distributed in the September Bundle. Vote recorders shall be the Secretary-Treasurer and the Senior Director. A recorder who is running for office shall be replaced by an alternate appointed by the President. Ballots received by either recorder after October 15 will be considered invalid.
Results of the election shall be published in the November Bundle. If in the judgment of the President, the two sets of ballots disagree sufficiently to obscure the outcome, another balloting shall be conducted promptly.
Special elections for official business may be held any time as required, following the same sequence set forth above.
In any contest the candidate or choice receiving the greatest number of valid votes shall be the winner.
In case of tie vote the outcome shall be determined by a majority of the Board.
If there are no contested races for APA offices, the President, with the approval of the Board, may declare those who filed for an office the winners without an election.
Article VII: Officers, Board, Terms & Tenure
The four elected officers are President, Vice President, Secretary-Treasurer, and Mailer: they are elected for two year terms, taking office on January 1 of odd-numbered years. These officers shall not serve more than two consecutive terms in the same office.
The three directors are elected for staggered six-year terms, one each to take office concurrently with the elected officers. Directors may not serve consecutive terms.
The Archivist shall be appointed by the President, with the advise of the Board, and serve for an indefinite term.
The holders of the above eight offices shall constitute the Board.
No member may hold more than one office simultaneously.
Should the office of the President become vacant, it shall be assumed by the Vice President.
Other vacancies shall be filled by appointment by the President, and ratified by at least two other Board members.
Directors so appointed shall serve until the next general election, at which time a Director shall be elected to finish the vacated term.
At the next general election such appointees, or Vice President assuming the office of President, shall not be construed to be in conflict with the tenure rules set forth in this article.
Article VIII: Duties of Board Members
The President is the chief spokesman and serves as Chairman of the Board. He shall be the alternate signator for the APA bank account. He shall ensure that the constitutional duties of all officers are discharged as specified.
The Vice President shall assist with the coordination of duties of all Board members, and with particular regard to:
Making every effort to contact all members whose dues are delinquent as of March 15.
Evaluation of the propriety of questionable Bundle contributions.
Membership petitions for activity waiver.
The Secretary-Treasurer is responsible for APA funds and membership records, with particular regard to:
Processing applications from prospective new members.
Collecting membership dues.
Advising Vice President promptly of all members whose dues are delinquent as of March 15.
Processing election petitions from members seeking to run for office or sponsor a constitutional amendment.
Arranging ballot distribution for general and special elections.
Maintaining a current membership list.
Maintaining proper bank accounts.
Publish or have published an annual report in the February bundle, to include a financial statement from the previous year, changes in the membership, and any other pertinent official business.
Maintain and publish or have published the current APA Constitution as required.
Publish or have published annually in the September bundle a notice reminding members that the November bundle will accept large items.
Publish or have published a current membership directory annually in the June bundle.
Publish or have published annually in the January bundle a dues notice.
The Mailer is responsible for distributing monthly Bundles, with particular regard to:
Printing 6.5”x9.5” or larger envelopes, at the mailer’s descretion, for mailing regular monthly bundles and 9”x12” envelopes for the November bundle. The mailer may use any kind of envelope he/she sees fit for mailing.
Normally mailing the Bundles between the 10th and 15th day of each month.
Withholding distribution of items of questionable propriety, and referring them to the Vice President.
The Archivist shall:
Receive and file an extra monthly Bundle.
Collect historical papers, pictures, clippings, journals, and similar items concerning APA.
Maintain a log of Bundle contributions to determine compliance with the activity requirement.
Publish a report annually in the September Bundle, listing by membership number only, all members who have not yet met activity requirement for the current year. For each such member, the report shall list the number of qualifying and non-qualifying items published both year-to-date and for the previous calendar year.
File a year-end activity report with the president and secretary-treasurer within 10 days upon receipt of the December bundle.
The Directors provide continuity for APA, and with the officers, comprise the Board, which sets policy.
Article IX: Amendments to Constitution
Any member may begin amendment proceedings by publishing a proposal in the Bundle, gaining supportive petitions from at least fifteen other members, and submitting the proposal and required support to the Secretary-Treasurer.
A majority of the board may begin amendment proceedings by publishing a proposal in the Bundle and submitting it to the Secretary-Treasurer.
When either of the above procedures is duly completed, the Secretary-Treasurer shall promptly conduct a special election for the proposed amendment.
About The Amalgamated Printers’ Association
All-Time Membership List
All-Time Officer List
Early History of the APA
Reprints from Type & Press
Wayzgoose Photo Galleries
How to Contact the APA
Contact the APA
Update Your Membership Information
Contact the APA President
Contact the APA Vice President
Contact the APA Secretary-Treasurer
Contact the APA Mailer
Contact the APA Website Manager
APA Links
2019 Wayzgoose, Nashville, TN
2018 Wayzgoose, Denver, CO
2017 Wayzgoose, Los Angeles, CA
Other Letterpress Links
Briar Press – A Letterpress Resource
Letterpress Things
Letterpress Printers of the World
Resource Guide for Letterpress
Subscribe to APA Updates via Email
Enter your email address to receive notifications of new updates by email.
Recent APA Updates
2019 APA Wayzgoose Website is Online… March 25, 2019
Latest Round of Reinstated & New Members… February 17, 2019
New Mailer Address Reminder…. February 8, 2019
2019 Membership Roster Changes January 22, 2019
In Memoriam of W. Gale Mueller, APA #575 September 6, 2018
Welcome two more new members!! September 6, 2018
Welcome Our Newest Member! June 24, 2018
Membership Changes for March… March 23, 2018
Loss of another member: Neil Salkind #880 March 23, 2018
Annual Dues Payment Reminder… February 17, 2018
All APA Updates
All APA Updates Select Month March 2019 (1) February 2019 (2) January 2019 (1) September 2018 (2) June 2018 (1) March 2018 (2) February 2018 (1) January 2018 (2) August 2017 (1) April 2017 (1) March 2017 (1) January 2017 (5) October 2016 (1) September 2016 (4) August 2016 (1) July 2016 (2) February 2016 (2) January 2016 (2) March 2015 (1) January 2015 (3) November 2014 (1) April 2014 (1) December 2013 (1) November 2013 (2) October 2013 (1) September 2013 (3) August 2013 (3) June 2013 (1) March 2013 (2) January 2013 (3)
Administrative Functions
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Home » Newswire » Highway interchange gives Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation access to cut-off land – CBC
Highway interchange gives Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation access to cut-off land – CBC
by ahnationtalk on January 15, 201971 Views
Community developing land and hopes to open gas station and convenience store later this year
A new interchange on Highway 104 gives Paqtnkek Mi’kmaw Nation near Antigonish, N.S., access to reserve land that’s sat unused for decades.
Federal and provincial politicians gathered with the community leadership for an official opening Tuesday morning.
The Trans-Canada Highway divided the community when it was built in the early 1960s. Now the new infrastructure allows the community to access about 200 hectares of land to the south of the highway that had been cut off.
Chief Paul Prosper called it a “historic celebration.”
“It’s really nice to see things come around from denial of basic certain rights related to access to sort of a reconciliation approach where there is recognition of the rights of our community,” he said.
Read More: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/highway-104-paqtnkek-mi-kmaw-nation-interchange-1.4978591
Lands, Mainstream Aboriginal Related News
http://atlantic.nationtalk.ca/story/highway-interchange-gives-paqtnkek-mikmaw-nation-access-to-cut-off-land-cbc
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ETB Travel News > Africa > Sydney Opera House: Charming Leo
Sydney Opera House: Charming Leo
Leo at the Sydney Opera House Playhouse.
Now on at The Sydney Opera House, Leo is living proof that the best ideas are often the simplest. One man, no words, three walls, and a floor―but which are the walls and which is the floor?
Cleverly employing a film screen the same size as the set, Leo takes spatial perception to a new level. Handsome French acrobat William Bonnet entertains the audience with his deft performance, leaving spectators to wonder which way is up when switching attention from the man in the flesh to the same live action shown on the screen. In a world where computer-generated effects and Photoshop are the norm in visual presentation of film and imagery, the absence of trickery and manipulation in Leo only adds to the enjoyment of Mr Bonnet’s talent, which combines the silent but communicative facial expressions of his countryman Marcel Marceau with the athleticism of an Olympic gymnast. More than just a series of physical moves with musical accompaniment, Leo has a storyline that charms the audience as it develops throughout the hourlong production.
Leo is a show for the whole family, a rare piece of theatre that entertains both children and adults at the appropriate levels of comprehension. If looking for an Opera House experience that delivers a high degree of satisfaction for a bargain price, Bonnet as Leo is your man. Why not make a day of it and take a VIP tour of the Sydney Opera House before the performance?
Sydney Opera House Playhouse
until 13 July 2014
LeoSydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House: Charming Leo" data-count="horizontal">Tweet Sydney Opera House: Charming Leo" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It
Lysis Machado, The Perfect Guide In Rio
Skyscanner sees the future of aviation and airports
Booking.com creates the world’s fi...
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CCXLI Suka said, The declarations of the Vedas are twofold. They once Jay down the command, Do all acts' They also indicate the reverse, saying, Give up acts' I ask, Whither do persons go by the aid of Knowledge and whither by the aid of acts I desire to hear this. Do tell me this. Indeed, these declarations about knowledge and acts are dissimilar and even contradictory' Bhishma continued, Thus addressed, the son of Parasara said these words unto his son, I shall expound to thee the two paths, viz, the destructible and the indestructible, depending respectively upon acts and knowledge. Listen with concentrated attention, O child, to me, as I tell thee the place that is reached by one with the aid of knowledge, and that other place which is reached with the aid of acts.
The difference between these two places is as great as the limitless sky. The question that thou hast asked me has given me such pain as an atheistic discourse gives to a man of faith. These are the two paths upon which the Vedas are established; the duties acts indicated by Pravritti, and those based on Nivritti that have been treated of so excellently By acts, a living creature is destroyed. By knowledge, however, he becomes emancipated. For this reason, Yogins who behold the other side of the ocean of life never betake themselves to acts. Through acts one is forced to take rebirth, after death, with a body composed of the six and ten ingredients. Through knowledge, however, one becomes transformed into that which is Eternal, Unmanifest, and Immutable. One class of persons that are however of little intelligence, applaud acts. In consequence of this they have to assume bodies one after another ceaselessly.
Those men whose perceptions are keen in respect of duties and who have attained to that high understanding which leads to knowledge, never applaud acts even as persons that depend for their drinking water upon the supply of streams never applaud wells and tanks. The fruit that one obtains of acts consists of pleasure and pain, of existence and non-existence. By knowledge, one attains to that whither there is no occasion for grief; whither one becomes freed from both birth and death; whither one is not subject to decrepitude; whither one transcends the state of conscious existence whither is Brahma which is Supreme, Unmanifest, immutable, ever-existent, imperceptible, above the reach of pain, immortal, and transcending destruction; whither all become freed from the influence of all pairs of opposites Like pleasure and pain, etc, as also of wish or purpose Reaching that stage, they cast equal eyes on everything, become universal friends and devoted to the good of all creatures. There is a wide gulf, O son, between one devoted to knowledge and one devoted to acts. Know that the man of knowledge, without undergoing destruction, remains existent for ever like the moon on the last day of the dark fortnight existing in a subtle but undestroyed form. The great Rishi Yajnavalkya in Vrihadaranayaka has said this more elaborately. As regards the man devoted to acts, his nature may be inferred from beholding the new-born moon which appears like a bent thread in the firmament
Know, O son, that the person of acts takes rebirth with a body with eleven entities, for its ingredients, that are the results of modification, and with a subtile form that represents a total of six and ten The deity who takes refuge in that material form, like a drop of water on a lotus leaf, should be known as Kshetrajna Soul, which is Eternal, and which succeeds by Yoga in transcending both the mind and the knowledge Tamas, Rajas, and Sattwa are the attributes of the knowledge. The knowledge is the attribute of the individual soul residing within the body. The individual soul, in its turn, comes from the Supreme Soul The body with the soul is said to be the attribute of jiva. It is jiva that acts and cause all bodies to live. He who has created the seven worlds is said by those that are acquainted with what is Kshetra and what is Kshetrajna to be above jiva
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Pablo Henriquez
Is Canadian government cash helping to back El Salvador’s harsh abortion law?
Is Canadian government cash helping to back El Salvador's harsh abortion law?
Federal funding supports prosecutors enforcing what some have called the most draconian abortion law anywhere
Evan Dyer · CBC News
In the end, Imelda Cortez's story was too much even for El Salvador's famously harsh courts. Her case was making news around the world, and DNA had confirmed that the newborn she was accused of attempting to murder was the product of rape by a 70-year-old stepfather who'd abused her throughout her childhood.
Cortez, 20, the daughter of a poor rural family, insisted she didn't know she was pregnant until she entered an outhouse and a child came out.
Continued: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/el-salvador-abortion-trudeau-ottawa-1.5153265
Evelyn Beatriz Hernández Cruz
FESPAD
Fundacion de Estudios para la Aplicacion del Derecho
Imelda Cortez
jailing women for stillbirth
Maricela Albizuri
Marie-Claude Bibeau
Maryam Monsef
Omar Flores
prosecuting women for abortion
Ricardo Langlois
Sonia Poulin
total abortion ban
In El Salvador, a 20-Year-Old Faces Prison Time After Giving Birth to Her Stepfather’s Baby in a Latrine
Imelda Isabel Cortez Palacios is just one of dozens of women in El Salvador who have been imprisoned following birth complications or miscarriages. But her case has taken on greater significance because at the hospital, she informed health professionals that her stepfather had raped her repeatedly between the ages of 12 and 19.
Kathy Bougher
On April 17, 2017, Imelda Isabel Cortez Palacios, then 19, gave birth to a baby girl in the latrine at her family’s home in the small community of Jiquilisco, La Paz, El Salvador. Cortez says she did not know she was about to give birth; instead, she told her lawyer, in the latrine she “felt something come loose.” She screamed for help before she fainted and started to hemorrhage heavily.
Her mother took her to the local public hospital, where medical personnel determined she had given birth. Because there was no baby or fetus present, they notified police. At the home, the baby was rescued from the latrine without any injuries.
Continued: https://rewire.news/article/2018/04/11/el-salvador-20-year-old-faces-prison-time-giving-birth-stepfathers-baby-latrine/
Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto
Angelica Rivas
Berta María Deleón
Imelda Isabel Cortez Palacios
Laura Aguirre
Maria Luz Nóchez
rape and abortion
sexual assault and abortion
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Primordial deities
Titans and Olympians
Aquatic deities
Chthonic deities
Personified concepts
Other deities
Asclepius, god of
Leto, mother of
Apollo and Artemis
Pan, shepherd god
Asclepius (Greek Template:Polytonic also rendered Aesculapius in Latin and transliterated Asklepios) was the god of medicine and healing in ancient Greek mythology, according to which he was born a mortal but was given immortality as the constellation Ophiuchus after his death. His name means "cut up".
Coronis (or Arsinoe) became pregnant with Asclepius by Apollo but fell in love with Ischys, son of Elatus. A crow informed Apollo of the affair and he sent his sister, Artemis, to kill Coronis. Her body was burned on a funeral pyre, staining the white feathers of the crows permanently black. Apollo rescued the baby though and gave it to the centaur Chiron to raise. Phlegyas, Coronis' father, was irate and torched the Apollonian temple at Delphi and Apollo killed him.
Chiron taught Asclepius the art of surgery, teaching him to be the most well-respected doctor of his day. According to the Pythian Odes of Pindar, Chiron also taught him the use of drugs, incantations and love potions. In The Library, Apollodorus claimed that Athena gave him a vial of blood from the Gorgons. Gorgon blood had magical properties: if taken from the left side of the Gorgon, it was a fatal poison; from the right side, the blood was capable of bringing the dead back to life.
Asclepius was killed from a thunderbolt from Zeus. The exact reason varies but it was definitely punishment for violating the natural order of the world by bringing the dead back to life. According to some, the catalyst was his acceptance of money in exchange for resurrection. In others, Zeus killed him after Athena asked him to resurrect Hippolytus. Zeus killed Asclepius and, in some versions, re-killed Hippolytus.
When Zeus killed Asclepius for raising the dead and violating the natural order of things, Apollo killed the Cyclopes in response. They had fashioned Zeus' thunderbolts, which he used to kill Apollo's son, Asclepius.
Zeus placed Asclepius in the sky as the constellation Ophiuchus ("serpent-bearer").
During the Trojan War, Asclepius was on the side of the Greeks. He healed Philoctetes from a snake-bite.
In honor of Asclepius, snakes were often used in healing rituals. Non-poisonous snakes were left to crawl on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept. Starting about 300 BCE, the cult of Asclepius grew very popular. His healing temples were called asclepieion; pilgrims flocked to them to be healed. They slept overnight and reported their dreams to a priest the following day. He prescribed a cure, often a visit to the baths or a gymnasium.
Hippocrates, the legendary doctor, may have begun his career at an asclepieion on the island of Cos.
Asclepius was married to Salus (or Epione) and with her fathered five daughters: Aceso, Iaso, Panacea, Aglaea and Hygieia, and three sons: Machaon, Telesforos and Polidarius. His most famous sanctuary was in Epidaurus in Northeastern Peloponnese.
His attributes included the rod of Asclepius and the cock.
Socrates' last words as reported in Plato's Phaedo are a reminder to Crito to sacrifice a cock for him to Asclepius.da:�skulap de:Asklepios el:Ασκληπιός es:Asclepio fr:Ascl�pios it:Asclepio nl:Asclepius pl:Asklepios sl:Eskalup
Retrieved from "http://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Asclepius"
Categories: Greek gods | Health gods
This page was last modified 11:57, 17 Jun 2005.
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This page was originally published on Tuesday 06 April, 2004.
Wednesday 07 April, 2004 >>
Email this article to a friend: North America Sport
Salvador's goal in overtime improves Blues' playoff hopes
Houston Chronicle, Sun 28 Mar 2004
If the St. Louis Blues make it to overtime, their opponents are in trouble. Bryce Salvador scored 1:50 into the extra period for a 4-3 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday, moving St. Louis back into playoff position. The Blues' 11th overtime victory of the season ties the NHL record set by Calgary in 1999-2000. "We were going for it," Salvador said. (WorldPhotos.com)
Top | Languages | Jobs | Submit Photos | WN Links | WN Network | © 2004 World News Network |
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16th & 17th Century
Analysis & overvew
Analysis & overview
Camapigns on the western front
Campaigns in Africa
Campaigns on the Western front
Campaigns other
Intelligence & espionage
naalysis & overview
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» Military history
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» Enemy on The Euphrates
Brand: Ian Rutledge
Enemy on The Euphrates
by Ian Rutledge
Publisher Saqi
Enemy on the Euphrates : The Battle for Iraq 1914-1921
Between July 1920 and February 1921, in the territory known as Mesopotamia (now the modern state of Iraq), an Arab revolt came perilously close to inflicting a shattering defeat upon the British Empire. A huge peasant army besieged British garrisons with sand-bagged entrenchments and bombarded them with captured artillery; columns and armoured trains were ambushed and destroyed; and well-armed gunboats were sunk or captured. Britain's quest for oil was central to its Middle East policy during the Great War and one of the principal reasons for its continuing occupation of Iraq.
With around 131,000 Arabs in arms at one stage of the conflict, however, the British were very nearly driven out. Only a massive infusion of Indian troops and the widespread use of aircraft prevented a total rout. Enemy on the Euphrates is the definitive account of the most serious armed uprising against British rule in the twentieth century.
Bringing central players such as Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell vividly to life, Ian Rutledge's masterful account is a powerful reminder of how Britain's imperial objectives sowed the seeds of Iraq's tragic history.
A Quest In The Middle East
Battles On The Tigris
Official History of The Campaign in Mesopotamia Volume 1
Official History of the Campaign in Mesopotamia Volume II
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Giant Caplico: Strawberry Chocolate
On paper, mixing ice cream and candy seems like a no-fail idea. Kids like candy. Kids like ice cream. And the kid inside all of us likes both.
.... And then there's this.
Surprisingly, this sugary snack only has 16 grams of sugar, and it's only 180 calories. But when you eat it, it feels like you ate double.
It's basically the coating of the strawberry Pocky and chocolate Pocky whipped extra thick and poured into an ice cream cone. It's overkill to an adult's tongue, but some say their kids like it. If you're over the age of 13, I recommend washing this down with a little Tums.
Chocolate PeJoy ~ A little slice of heaven
While the above commercial may be stretching things a bit on the chocolaty river claim, PeJoy really is a Thailand treat.
It's actually a blend of chocolate and malt, wrapped in a thin, plain biscuit stick. The filling is thicker than frosting, and two bites in, delivers on a rich taste.
One serving is one whole box at 270 calories, but does contain in each serving 4 grams of protein, along with 6% of your daily source of calcium and 4% of your daily need of iron, which makes it slightly more healthy than a candy bar. Plus, the sticks themselves keep you fuller longer than a candy bar, so you're not tempted to keep searching for the next snack.
The best way to enjoy PeJoy and to get the most out of it's flavor, is to eat it slowly and enjoy with a cup of Malt Ovaltine. This brings out the background hints of malt.
INGREDIENTSWHEAT FLOUR, SUGAR, VEGETABLE OIL (INTERESTERIFIED VEGETABLE OIL (PALM KERNEL OIL, PALM OIL, RAPESEED OIL), TOCOPHEROLS), WHOLE MILK POWDER, COCOA MASS, SHORTENING (PALM OIL, TOCOPHEROLS, CITRIC ACID), MALT EXTRACT, COCOA POWDER, CONTAINS 1 PERCENT OR LESS OF: SALT, LEAVENING AGENT (SODIUM BICARBONATE), LECITHIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, POLYGLYCEROL POLYRICINOLEATE, SODIUM HYDROXIDE, PAPAIN.
CONTAINS: WHEAT, MILK AND SOYBEANS.
MANUFACTURED IN A FACILITY THAT USES PEANUTS AND ALMONDS.
Strawberry Pocky
Strawberry Pocky comes in a variety of different packages. The most common package is a light pink box with a little baggie of the biscuit sticks inside, but for different occasions, Strawberry Pocky can be sold in dark pink boxes like the one seen here, light pink bags, white-pink boxes for Valentine's Day or White Day, and on occasion, in a Hello Kitty box, though the latter so far has only been sold in Japan and in Thailand.
The biscuit sticks themselves are more like a faintly-sweet cracker, but the strawberry coating is a great combination of sweetness and tart flavors. The coating reminds me of Strawberry cereals. It has a sharp Frankenberry taste that is very nostalgic, making it a perfect replacement for the Halloween cereal during the months it isn't on store shelves.
Dieters will be happy to know that it's low calorie, so you can eat a whole box of it and not destroy your diet. It's great for on the go snacking and fits snugly in the car.
Of course, if you're a big strawberry fanatic, Glico makes a GIANT version of this as well, with little bits of Strawberry stuck to the sticks for added flavor.
Strawberry Pocky is the perfect tag-along for Spring snacking, especially if you plan to be in Japan during the Sakura viewing. It's light pink color is as easy on the eyes as the taste is in the mouth.
WHEAT FLOUR, SUGAR, VEGETABLE OIL (INTERESTERIFIED SUNFLOWER OIL, PLAM OIL, LECITHIN, TOCOPHEROLS, CITRIC ACID),, LACTOSE, WHOLE MILK POWDER, MARGARINE (VEGETABLE OIL (REFINED PALM OIL, HYDROGENATED PALM OIL) SALT, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, TOCOPHEROLS, BHA, BETA-CAROTENE COLOR) CONTAINS 1 PERCENT OR LESS OF: ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, BEET RED COLOR, SALT, STRAWBERRY POWDER, LECITHIN, TRISODIUM PHOSPHATE, YEAST, MONOGLYCERIDE, POLYGLYCEROL POLYRICINOLEATE, LEAVING (SODIUM BICARBONATE), POLYGLYCEROL POLYRICINOLEATE, PAPAIN
CONTAINS: WHEAT, MILK AND SOYBEANS
Chocolate/Original Pocky
Pocky is arguably one of the most iconic snacks shown in anime, but few really know the history of the pre-packaged snack food. Created in 1966 by Ezaki Glico, most of the Pocky we see in North America comes from California and Thailand, but the snack originates from Japan. You can find a more robust version of it's history on pocky.com which is jazzed up with a large HD video in the background.
Original Pocky comes in a red box and has more than a dozen snack sticks. Each stick is a super thin cracker tube with a wheat aftertaste. The tubes are dipped in a very dark chocolate, and then placed in a wrapper, followed by the box. Sometimes, a stick will have a little extra chocolate at the tip, which has a satisfying texture, like eating less than 1/16th of a bite-size Hershey bar.
A regular-sized box of Pocky counts as one serving. Considering that one whole box is just 190 calories, that's not so bad, as it makes the snack 50 calories less than the average candy bar, which can set you back 240 calories. Pocky is sweet, but despite it's thin size can also satisfy a light hunger pang.
The ingredients for Pocky may not be the most healthy, but it's a great travel-sized snack, and also makes for less-messy eating. Below are the ingredients:
WHEAT FLOUR, SUGAR, CHOCOLATE LIQUOR, VEGETABLE OIL (INTERESTERIFIED SUNFLOWER OIL, PALM OIL, LECITHIN, TOCOPHEROLS, CITRIC ACID), WHOLE MILK POWDER, MARGARINE, (VEGETABLE OIL (REFINED PALM OIL, HYDROGENATED PALM OIL) SALT, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, TOCOPHEROLS, BHA, BETA-CAROTENE COLOR) CONTAINS 1 PERCENT OR LESS OF: COCOA BUTTER, ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, SALT, LECITHIN, TRISODIUM PHOSPHATE, YEAST, MONOGLYCERIDE, LEAVING (SODIUM BICARBONATE), POLYGLYCEROL POLYRICINOLEATE, PAPAIN
MANUFACTURED IN A FACILITY THAT USES PEANUTS, ALMONDS
Egg/Tamago
Ezaki Glico Co.
JFC International
Kasugai
Litchi/Lychee
Nongshim Co LTD
Shirakiku
White Gourd
Wismettac
Yeo's
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The No Name Show Ep. 1
June 21, 2019 admin
Arvin Jones Accepts 2019 NSBE Lifetime Achievement in Industry Award
April 5, 2019 admin
At the National Society of Black Engineers’ (NSBE) 45th Annual Convention held in Detroit, General Motors’ Arvin Jones received the 2019 NSBE Lifetime Achievement in Industry Award. The manufacturing executive director for Propulsion Systems and Casting Operations was able to retire from GM after 42 years of dedicated service. During his time at the company, Jones…
Beyonce’s 2019 Boss Moves
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Celebrating The Culture: Banning Negative Music.
How I Revisited the Last Moments of Martin Luther King’s Life
When I agreed to travel to Jackson, Tennessee, to speak to students, faculty, staff, and community members at their Inaugural Leadership Conference, little did I know what was in store. In addition to the warm reception, the local news coverage, and the camaraderie from my longtime friend Dr. Logan Hampton, the president of HBCU Lane College, revisiting…
Big Sean Gives HBCU Students an Opportunity to Participate in Entrepreneurship
Detroit native Sean “Big Sean” Anderson announced a team of five students from Florida A&M University as the winners of Moguls in the Making, an entrepreneurship competition created by Motor City-based Ally Financial in collaboration with his Sean Anderson Foundation, and The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF). What did the team propose? A concept to…
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A black woman makes political history again: On Tuesday, Lori Lightfoot became Chicago’s first black woman mayor. Lightfoot achieves another milestone as the first openly gay mayor of a large city. The Chicago mayoral race was closely watched around the country. There were two black women in the race—Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle—in a political battle…
McDonald’s Celebrates Black Excellence Through New ‘Black & Positively Golden ‘Campaign
McDonald’s USA rolled out its largest campaign in 16 years targeting African American consumers on Friday. The new campaign, titled “Black & Positively Golden,” aims to uplift black communities and inspire excellence through education, empowerment, and entrepreneurship. It also replaces the McDonald’s 365Black platform, which began in 2003. The campaign launched in partnership with YWCA…
Success Tips From Nipsey Hussle #Hustle101
Intel Capital Announces New Partnership with HBCUvc
Intel Capital recently announced its new partnership with HBCUvc, a nonprofit that trains black and Latinx students attending historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) for a career in venture capital. Intel Capital has been leading the corporate VC industry for diversity and inclusion through investments and their talent pipeline and felt this was the perfect synergy….
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Front Porch Punditry » News » National News » Back in the Zone: Michigan Students Challenge Campus Speech Zone Policy
#1 | Back in the Zone: Michigan Students Challenge Campus Speech Zone Policy Mon Dec 12, 2016 7:57 am
ThirstyMan
Admiral James O. Richardson - Moderator
Location: Concord MA
By Jana Minich Posted on: | December 08, 2016
On a public university campus, meant to be a “marketplace of ideas”, it seems particularly ironic that university officials can threaten to arrest a student for peacefully exercising their right to free speech in order to advocate… for free speech.
Another irony is labeling .02% of a public campus as “free speech zones” while still requiring approval for the messages spoken therein.
And yet, Michigan’s Grand Valley State University’s (GVSU) “Speech Zone Policy” does just that. On top of that, GVSU can also censor messages based on viewpoint or simply refuse to ever respond to a free speech request, since there is no time period in which school administrators must approve or deny a request to speak in the speech zone.
To make matters worse, those who violate this policy face punishments ranging from warnings to suspension and even expulsion.
These types of policies are a gross violation of students’ constitutional rights. That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against GVSU on behalf of two students who ran afoul of this bad policy.
GVSU students Tim McKeeby and Joe Tucker found themselves at odds with the Speech Zone Policy while peacefully speaking with other students about constitutional rights. These students never harassed or harmed anyone; they didn’t even block the sidewalk. Still, when Tim and Joe left the small space reserved for “free speech” to talk to students in another area of campus, school police officers informed them that they would be arrested if they dared to speak outside of the speech zone.
The final irony in this story is that Joe had later watched belligerent post-election protestors as they flagrantly violated the speech policy—and no one from the university stepped in to stop them. It seems the speech policy is less about peace and more about controlling the marketplace of ideas.
University Officials Cannot Decide Which Viewpoints to Allow and Which to Ban on Campus
Other universities have similarly attempted to run roughshod over free speech, like University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire and Iowa State University. These schools seem to think that controlling the conversation is part of the administration’s job. But universities should be microcosms of a robust marketplace of ideas, a place where students can encounter new and different viewpoints and enjoy their constitutional rights.
Share this post on social media to spread the word about the continued attempts by universities to control the conversation and exclude certain viewpoints.
https://www.adflegal.org/detailspages/bl...ech-zone-policy
And here's the official statement from the Dean of Students at GVSU...
Context for Free Speech
If you have spent time at Grand Valley, you may have noticed, on occasions, people gathered to express their ideas and opinions on a myriad of issues. GVSU is a community of scholars. Like most universities, our basic purposes are to advance, to disseminate, and to apply knowledge. An essential condition for achieving these purposes is freedom of expression and communication. Without this freedom, effective sifting and testing of ideas ceases, and teaching and learning are diminished.
Sometimes individuals or groups express ideas that offend others in the GVSU community. The question has been asked, why do we let this happen on our campus? Grand Valley is a public university, and as such it is obligated to uphold the tenets of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects free speech. In addition, as a community, we believe a basic condition for achieving a liberal education includes freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas through open communication. To that end, the university has developed policies and procedures to help distinguish protected speech from unacceptable behaviors.
Lawful, non-disruptive public demonstrations are permitted at Grand Valley and are protected by the First Amendment, without regard for the point of view being expressed. Under the First Amendment, we cannot restrict these demonstrations based upon content. Under civil and criminal law, as well as university policies, an individual or group may not: deny free expression to others who are engaged in peaceful discourse or dissent, deny any person's freedom of movement on university property, obstruct ingress and/or egress with respect to buildings or public areas, endanger or threaten to endanger any person on university property, or otherwise disrupt the ability of any person to participate and enjoy the benefits of campus life.
While GVSU safeguards individuals’ constitutional rights and protected speech, we are also committed to inclusion and equity. The way that people are treated at Grand Valley matters. We want everyone to be treated with dignity and respect and take responsibility for their words and actions.
Anytime anyone in the Grand Valley community feels belittled, disrespected, or isolated because of who they are, the entire university community is diminished. Bias incidents are directed toward an individual or group because of their real or perceived race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, sex/gender, gender identity, gender expression, political affiliation, religion, familial status, marital status, disability, age, height, weight, or veteran status.
While these acts do not necessarily rise to the level of a violation of the student code, university policy or the law, they may contribute to creating an unsafe, negative or unwelcome environment.
Grand Valley has developed the Bias Incident reporting process to help us identify incidents that have an adverse impact on the inclusive learning environment on campus and to provide avenues for providing individual support, educational dialogue and constructive responses to address bias incidents. Bias incidents can be reported at www.gvsu.edu/bias. In cases where it is determined that harassment has occurred, the university’s Anti-Harassment Policy can be utilized at www.gvsu.edu/gvmanual under Policies and Procedures. Grand Valley is an exciting academic community where ideas are openly and rigorously shared and debated. While we may not agree or even like each other always, the university strives to be a place where people share thoughts freely, where people learn from each other, and where mutual respect and caring for one another is evident even when we must agree to disagree because of differences in thinking – indeed, this makes Grand Valley a “special” place for learning.
Eileen G. Sullivan
Vice Provost for Student Affairs
and Dean of Students
http://www.gvsu.edu/dos/context-for-free-speech-8.htm
"It’s a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs, who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will." Donald Trump's Victory Speech 11/9/16
INSIDE EVERY LIBERAL IS A TOTALITARIAN SCREAMING TO GET OUT -- Frontpage mag
#2 | RE: Back in the Zone: Michigan Students Challenge Campus Speech Zone Policy Mon Dec 12, 2016 2:42 pm
Grand Valley is an exciting academic community where ideas are openly and rigorously shared and debated.
Except for those ideas we don't like.
the university has developed policies and procedures to help distinguish protected speech from unacceptable behaviors.
hmmm ... by implication speech with which the pc administration does not agree is an 'unacceptable behavior' have any of these people ever read the first amendment ???
Macy’s announces it will no longer donate to Planned Parenthood » « White House suggests Trump benefited from Russia hacking
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Front Porch Punditry » News » Donald J. Trump » Victims of Illegal Alien Crime Given a Voice: ‘Every One of Our Children’s Deaths Have Been Preventable’
#1 | Victims of Illegal Alien Crime Given a Voice: ‘Every One of Our Children’s Deaths Have Been Preventable’ Wed Jul 05, 2017 11:16 am
Victims of Illegal Alien Crime Given a Voice: ‘Every One of Our Children’s Deaths Have Been Preventable’
by Michelle Moons3 Jul 2017Washington, D.C.4,651
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A diverse group of Americans whose loved ones are dead by the hands of illegal alien criminals had the opportunity to tell their stories in front of cameras from inside the White House just days ago when President Donald Trump honored them at a roundtable event.
Kate’s Law and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act passed the U.S. House last week with the full Davis-Oliver Act still waiting for a vote. Davis-Oliver would enhance the ability of the federal government and immigration authorities to enforce immigration law and crack down on sanctuary cities. Kate’s Law and No Sanctuary for Criminals are portions of Davis-Oliver. These bills were discussed at the White House meeting but got scarce coverage in the mainstream media, a phenomena these “Angel” families have experienced for years.
Trump dedicated his most recent weekly address to these families. The President pointed out that many of those responsible for killing these Americans have extensive criminal records and had been repeatedly deported, yet were in the U.S. at the time of taking an American life.
“If the government had simply enforced our immigration laws, these Americans would still be alive today,” said Trump. He spoke of two bills passed this week in the House and called for the U.S. Senate to vote on them and get them to his desk for signing “as soon as possible.” He thanked Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte for moving the bills forward, while referencing “other crucial legislation that will soon be considered as well.” This likely includes the Davis-Oliver Act.
Trump called on members of both parties to stand with these victims of illegal alien crime, “either vote to save and protect American lives or vote to shield and comfort criminal aliens who threaten innocent lives, and they’ve been shielded too long.”
“The foundation of freedom is rule of law,” said Trump who looked forward to the 4th of July, Independence Day. He asked Americans to remember those families who have an “empty seat at the table this year” and asked all to pledge to “protect, defend, and save American lives.”
Trump asked the families to tell their stories as the clicks of cameras could be heard in the background.
Sitting next to Trump was Jamiel Shaw Sr. Shaw told of the murder of his teenage son Jamiel Shaw Jr. “He was living the dream. That was our dream, ya know. And it was squashed out.”
Julie Golvach spoke of her son Spencer Golvach who was shot and killed in January 2015 while sitting in his vehicle waiting for a spotlight to change. The illegal alien who killed Spencer had been deported multiple times before he murdered the 25-year-old young man and another man in a shooting spree. He wounded three police officers before a Harris County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed him, according to the Texas Tribune.
Mary Ann Mendoza lost her son Sgt. Brandon Mendoza of the Mesa police department when an illegal alien, drunk to three times the legal limit and high on meth, drove the wrong way on a highway and hit and killed Brandon. The individual also perished as a result of the crash. “I’m tired of our politicians not caring about their fellow Americans,” said Mendoza. “When did it ever become more important to our elected officials to protect illegal criminals in our country and not care about us?”
Melissa Oliver spoke of losing her father, Sacramento sheriff’s Deputy Sheriff Danny Oliver, and the illegal alien who had been deported twice before killing him and had a criminal record. “This senseless crime has affected my family in many ways that are unexplainable, the pain is tremendous, and it’s something we’ll never get over.”
Michelle Wilson-Root’s daughter Sarah Root was killed shortly after graduating from college. Root recounted for a Congressional committee that the illegal alien was street racing while drunk to allegedly four times the legal limit when he rear-ended Sarah’s vehicle and killed her. Edwin Mejia spent only four days in jail before posting bail and taking off on the run. He was believed to have fled back to Honduras. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement added Mejia to it’s “Most Wanted” list in March of this year.
Root said at the White House meeting:
Legal immigrant Sabine Durden shared the story of her son Dominic who was killed by an illegal alien who had been twice convicted of driving drunk. The illegally present Guatemalan national was given just 90 days in jail.
Steve Ronnebeck lost his son Grant when an illegal alien came into the convenience store where Grant worked and shot and killed the 21-year-old young man. In 2015, Ronnebeck told Breitbart News, “The man pulled a gun, Grant offered up the cigarettes and the man executed him, shooting him in the face. Stepped over his body, grabbed two more packs of cigarettes and fled.” Grant’s killer is a self-professed member of the Sinaloa cartel. The alien had a criminal background including burglary, which Ronnebeck has said was pleaded down from home invasion and a week-long sexual assault.
Juan Pina told the story of his 14-year-old daughter Christy Sue Pina who was “strangled, stabbed, raped, sodomized. Her nude body was thrown in an artichoke field in the middle of winter” in 1990. The field was in Castroville, California. Accused killer Arsenio “Archie” Leyva fled to Mexico again and has been fighting extradition since he was found there in 2015.
Laura Wilkerson recounted the killing of her 18-year-old son Joshua. “In November of 2010, he was systematically tortured, brutally beaten, murdered, and then his body set on fire after death. From somebody who shouldn’t have been in this country. Josh was a good kid.” Wilkerson said he was about to graduate from high school and had aspirations of joining the Air Force as his older brother had.
Breitbart News reported on The National Day of Remembrance (National Day of Remembrance for Americans killed by illegal aliens) event in November 2014 and again in 2015 after the Trump press conference. Despite organizers’ statement in 2015 to Breitbart News that they had informed several media outlets, no other media outlet showed up.
On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Kate’s Law, named for criminal alien victim Kate Steinle, and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act which includes Grant’s Law and Sarah’s Law. Grant’s Law is named for Grant Ronnebeck and Sarah’s Law is named for Sarah Root. The future of the bills as they move on to the U.S. Senate is uncertain. Many continue to hope that the House will pass the substantial Davis-Oliver Act, which despite the passage of these other laws, is still waiting for a vote.
On the day last week that these two bills passed the House, the “Big Three” television networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — dedicated a massive 12 minutes and 14 seconds to Trump’s tweets about MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, yet only NBC’s Lester Holt covered passage of the two bills and even then only gave it 26-seconds, according to NewsBusters. Fox News did report that both bills passed with some measure of bipartisan support.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...en-preventable/
No doubt they were too busy micro analyzing and trashing Trump's latest tweet !
#2 | RE: Victims of Illegal Alien Crime Given a Voice: ‘Every One of Our Children’s Deaths Have Been Preventable’ Wed Jul 05, 2017 2:23 pm
And what has this got to with Russia, I ask?
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How To Change Recurring Decimals Into Fractions
Converting Terminating and Repeating Decimals to Fractions (A)
Welcome to The Converting Terminating and Repeating Decimals to Fractions (A) Math Worksheet from the Fractions Worksheets Page at Math-Drills.com. This Fractions Worksheet may be printed, downloaded or saved and used in your classroom, home school, or other educational environment to help someone learn math.... It is possible to convert fractions into decimals. As a fraction really means 'divide the
How do you convert 0.7 (7 repeating) to a fraction? Socratic
Namely, to convert a repeating decimal into a fraction, multiply the repeating decimal by some power of 10—that is, by 10, 100, 1000, or whatever is needed—so that we can then subtract the repeating decimal part off of this new number. For example, to turn 0.444… into 4/9 we just multiply 0.444… by 10 to get 4.444…, then subtract 0.444… from this to get 4—a number without a... Convert a Pure Recurring Decimal into Vulgar Fraction To convert a pure recurring decimal into a vulgar fraction, (1) Remove the number left to the decimal point, if any. (2) Write the repeated figures only once in the numerator without the decimal point.
How do I change a fraction into a recurring decimal
Namely, to convert a repeating decimal into a fraction, multiply the repeating decimal by some power of 10—that is, by 10, 100, 1000, or whatever is needed—so that we can then subtract the repeating decimal part off of this new number. For example, to turn 0.444… into 4/9 we just multiply 0.444… by 10 to get 4.444…, then subtract 0.444… from this to get 4—a number without a how to clean washing machine waste pipe 9/03/2008 · To write a recurring decimal use bar notation (where you write the answer and place a bar over the decimals that repeat): 5 divided by 12 = 0.416666666...
How do you change repeating decimals into fractions
27/05/2018 · A repeating decimal, also known as a recurring decimal, is a decimal number that has a digit or digits that infinitely repeat at regular intervals. Repeating decimals can be tricky to work with, but they can also be converted into a... how to change the reticule 27/05/2018 · A repeating decimal, also known as a recurring decimal, is a decimal number that has a digit or digits that infinitely repeat at regular intervals. Repeating decimals can be tricky to work with, but they can also be converted into a...
Conversion of Mixed Recurring Decimals into Vulgar Fractions
Recurring Decimals transum.org
Converting fractions to & from recurring decimals by
In this video we learn how to convert recurring decimals to fractions. Start off by writing out the decimal with the dot next to it to show that it's recurring. This means that the number goes on forever and doesn't stop. To convert this to a fraction, write down the number as the numerator. On the bottom you will put the number 9 always. Now, you can divide these two numbers with each other
Converting fractions to decimals is just another way of expressing division. The same tools you use to divide whole numbers help you turn a fraction into a decimal. In addition, you can use a few shortcuts to make the process simpler to understand.
How to convert a repeating decimal into a fraction Let's name our number a = 0.135135135... and multiply it by a power of 10, then subtract the original a and the new number so that the repeating decimal parts cancel each other in the subtraction.
Convert a Pure Recurring Decimal into Vulgar Fraction To convert a pure recurring decimal into a vulgar fraction, (1) Remove the number left to the decimal point, if any. (2) Write the repeated figures only once in the numerator without the decimal point.
27/05/2018 · A repeating decimal, also known as a recurring decimal, is a decimal number that has a digit or digits that infinitely repeat at regular intervals. Repeating decimals can be tricky to work with, but they can also be converted into a...
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POLITICS: Framed
Ace with an incisive post on the media and the Tea Party movement.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 3:05 PM | Politics 2010 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
POLITICS: 8-K? What's An 8-K?
Coming as it does somewhat within my area of professional expertise, this is perhaps the most alarming example yet of the complete ignorance of the Obama Administration and Capitol Hill Democrats regarding how business operates - and to think these same people will be voting on overhauling financial services regulation:
The White House political and legislative operations were said to be livid with the announcement by several large U.S. companies that they were taking multi-million or as much as a billion dollar charges because of the new health-care law, the issue was front-and-center with key lawmakers. By last Friday, AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co., and AK Steel Holding Corp. had all announced that they were taking the one-time charges on their first-quarter balance sheets. More companies were expected to make similar announcements this week.
"These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general," says a White House legislative affairs staffer. "Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative websites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It's BS."
On Friday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of the companies that took the financial hits and attacked them for doing so. One Washington office head said that the White House calls were accusatory and "downright rude."
The companies are taking the charges because in 2013 they will lose a tax deduction on tax-free government subsidies they have had when they give retirees a Medicare Part D prescription-drug reimbursement. Many of these companies have more than 100,000 retirees each. AT&T may have more than three-quarters of a million retirees to cover.
"Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the President," says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. "My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn't know what was in the bill."
It isn't just the President who didn't understand his own proposal. Late Friday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel, announced that they would hold hearings in late April to investigate "claims by Caterpillar, Verizon, and Deere that provisions in the new health care reform law could adversely affect their company's ability to provide health insurance to their employees."
Read the whole thing. H/T Moe Lane. Then, read Mark Steyn's explanation of the specific change at issue and why it's likely to change corporate behavior:
In 2003, Washington blessed a grateful citizenry with the Medicare prescription drug benefit, it being generally agreed by all the experts that it was unfair to force seniors to choose between their monthly trip to Rite-Aid and Tony Danza in dinner theatre.
However, in order to discourage American businesses from immediately dumping all their drug plans for retirees, Congress gave them a modest tax break equivalent to 28% of the cost of the plan.
Fast forward to the dawn of the ObamaCare utopia. In one of a bazillion little clauses in a 2,000-page bill your legislators didn't bother reading (because, as Congressman Conyers explained, he wouldn't understand it even if he did), Congress voted to subject the 28% tax benefit to the regular good ol' American-as-apple-pie corporate tax rate of 35%.
For the purposes of comparison, Sweden's corporate tax rate is 26.3%, and Ireland's is 12.5%. But just because America already has the highest corporate tax in the OECD is no reason why we can't keep going until it's double Sweden's and quadruple Ireland's.
I refer you to the decision last year by the donut chain Tim Hortons, a Delaware corporation, to reorganize itself as a Canadian corporation "in order to take advantage of Canadian tax rates." Hold that thought: "In order to take advantage of Canadian tax rates" - a phrase hitherto unknown to American English outside the most fantastical futuristic science fiction.
Ask yourself this: If you impose a sudden 35% tax on something, are you likely to get as much of it? Go on, take a wild guess. On the day President Obama signed ObamaCare into law, Verizon sent an e-mail to all its employees warning that the company's costs "will increase in the short term."
And in the medium term? Well, U.S. corporations that are able to do so will get out of their prescription drugs plans and toss their retirees onto the Medicare pile. So far just three companies - Deere, Caterpillar and Valero Energy - have calculated that the loss of the deduction will add a combined $265 million to their costs.
There are an additional 3,500 businesses presently claiming the break. The cost to taxpayers of that 28% benefit is about $665 per person. The cost to taxpayers of equivalent Medicare coverage is about $1,200 per person. So we're roughly doubling the cost of covering an estimated five million retirees.
Now, let me explain this real simple: If you do something that's going to cost a company a lot of money, they have a whole lot of legal reasons why they have to tell their shareholders that sooner or later. And, if they're being prudent, they will tell them sooner rather than later when it starts showing up in the company's cash flow and the stockholders panic. Dennis the Peasant goes through this in a bit more detail, and he and Erick and Ace all look at Waxman's plan to drag the disclosing CEOs before a Congressional committee to explain why they are daring to inform their shareholders of the impact that the new regulations, specifically the withdrawal of tax breaks, will have on their business.
At least honest leftists would admit that yes, they were doing something genuinely harmful to publicly traded employers, although honest leftists would next try to pass even more laws to prevent the companies from doing anything to pass on the costs to employees, customers and/or taxpayers so as to preserve enough return to shareholders to enable the company to keep raising capital to stay in business. But in the happy-fairy-land of guys like Obama and Waxman, there are never any costs or tradeoffs to heaping new taxes and regulations on businesses in the middle of a recession, and no behavioral incentives changed when you meddle with the tax code.
The level of ignorance here is staggering. George W. Bush understood this stuff. Sarah Palin understands this stuff. Yet, these people whose self-image depends on telling themselves how much smarter than Bush and Palin they are, are continually taken by surprise by these things.
UPDATE: Ben Domenech looks at how Waxman is banking on intimidation but may end up getting more than he bargained for by calling witnesses who have no realistic choice but to contradict him.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 6:56 PM | Business | Law 2009-14 | Politics 2010 | Comments (25) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: Roto Madness
Some of this blog's readers are not going to be interested in what follows, but I know some of you are fellow fantasy baseball players interested in my annual draft - which took place today - so click below the fold.
I never did get to go through how I managed to miss out on winning my league last year despite having, at quite reasonable prices, the MVP, Cy Young and - off the waiver wire - Rookie of the Year (Mauer, Greinke and Bailey), plus Victor Martinez and Justin Verlander at good prices as well (I got them, Greinke and Mauer for less than $20 apiece; this year, the four would have set you back $119); but the answer mostly begins and ends with spending $40 on Grady Sizemore. Anyway, it came down to checking my blackberry to watch the boxscore unfold in game 163, and when neither Mauer nor Denard Span hit enough homers to get me back to first - where I'd been as late as game 160 or 161, if I recall rightly - I fell short.
This year's team was a classic of good news, bad news. The good news: I saved my money and ended up with four solid starters, as many as four possible closers, and everyday players at all but one position (2B), all but one or two of them with some power. The bad news: I saved too much money to the end, have too few stars and too few steals, and am sort of at sea for a fifth starter.
Here's the roster, with prices (traditional AL 4-category Roto league, $260 budget, 12 teams.
C-Matt Wieters $18
C-Adam Moore $8
I overpaid a little for Wieters because we were running to the end of quality catchers, not because I'm overconfident that he'll bust out; Moore was one of my last picks when I was burning extra cash.
1B-Lyle Overbay $4
3B-Kevin Kouzmanoff $11
CI-Brandon Wood $6
All everyday players with pop, cheap.
2B-Alberto Callaspo-$10
SS-Cliff Pennington-$7
MI-Yuniesky Betancourt-$11
Poor cash management: Betancourt was my last buy on whom I blew my remaining stack of cash, and Callaspo also came near the end. Callaspo will play regularly only until Gordon returns, but at least he should contribute a good batting average. Pennington will run a bit.
OF-Josh Hamilton $24
OF-Nick Swisher $11
OF-Magglio Ordonez $14
OF-Nolan Reimold $15
OF-Delmon Young $14
I'm happy with my outfield, all regulars with some power at reasonable prices, some undervalued veterans (Ordonez) and some youths with growth potential (Young).
DH-Jack Cust $7
Power, but won't help in any other way.
P-Jeff Niemann $11
P-John Lackey $18
P-Jake Peavy $20
P-David Price $12
P-Derek Holland $2
P-Bobby Jenks $19
P-Kerry Wood $5
P-Jon Rauch $6
P-Jason Frasor $7
Wood is supposed to be out 6-8 weeks, but he is in Cleveland for no other reason than to close. Frasor won the Toronto closer job, a note I saw this morning before the draft. Rauch has the inside track on closing in Minnesota. Unfortunately, the starters are a little shaky and Holland has been sent back to AAA, so my reserve draft was partly concerned with finding people to get innings and wins until Wood and Holland arrive.
1-Ben Revere
2-Tommy Hunter
3-Andy Sonnanstine
4-Matt Tolbert
5-Juan Cruz
6-Jeremy Accardo
7-Trevor Crowe
8-Mitch Maier
9-Armando Galarraga
10-Wilson Betemit
« Close It
Posted by Baseball Crank at 10:46 PM | Baseball 2010 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: 2010 AL Central EWSL Report
Part 3 of my preseason previews is the AL Central; this is the third of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I'd suggest you check out the explanations first if you're new to these previews. I've also resurrected for this season the team ages, which are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Prior previews: the AL West & AL East.
Some players are rated based on less than three seasons or given a rookie rating. Key:
+ (Rookie)
* (Based on one season)
# (Based on two seasons)
Raw EWSL: 241.50 (94 W)
Adjusted: 252.03 (97 W)
Age-Adj.: 243.37 (94 W)
WS Age: 29.05
2010 W-L: 94-68
Raw EWSL
Age Adj
Justin Morneau
Orlando Hudson
JJ Hardy
Brendan Harris
Michael Cuddyer
Denard Span#
Delmon Young
Jason Kubel
Jose Morales*
Nick Punto
Alexi Casilla
Scott Baker
Nick Blackburn#
Kevin Slowey
Francisco Liriano
Carl Pavano
Jon Rauch
Matt Guerrier
Jose Mijares*
Jesse Crain
Clay Condrey
Subjective Adjustments: None, but given Justin Morneau's usual durability, unless Jason Kubel spends a good deal of time hurt or in the field, Jim Thome's not going to approach 11 Win Shares.
Also on Hand: Position players - Matt Tolbert, Jacque Jones, Ben Revere. Revere, a 22-year-old center fielder, may not make an appearance for a while, but he's a career .337/.396/.430 hitter in the minors, where he averaged 70 stolen bases per 162 games. That's all A ball and lower, so don't get too excited just yet, but a guy who can hit .379/.433/.497 and steal 44 bases in 83 games at age 20, as Revere did in Class A Beloit in 2008, is one to watch. Revere has hit .325 this spring in big league camp, but is headed for AA to work on his defense, which reading between the lines suggests that he'll end up as a left fielder.
Pitchers - Pat Neshek, Glen Perkins, Ron Mahay, Brian Duensing, Bobby Keppel, Anthony Swarzak, Rob Delaney. Also Joe Nathan, of course, but Nathan's having Tommy John surgery today, so Opening Day 2011 is an optimistic timetable.
Analysis: Despite the costly loss of Nathan, which likely leaves the closer job either in Rauch's hands or a combination of Rauch and Guerrier, the Twins remain the class of the field due mainly to Mauer and a solid infield. I already had Mauer approaching historic levels as a two-way catcher when I wrote my Hall of Fame catchers column in February 2009, and that was before he led the AL in batting, slugging and OBP. Fact: Mauer has now had 600 plate appearances in a season three times, and won the batting title all three. Fact: No other AL catcher has ever won a batting title; Mauer has as many as all NL catchers combined (Deacon White did win the 1875 National Association title as a catcher, and White and King Kelly won batting titles while doing some part-time catching in 1877, 1884 & 1886). But Mauer caught only 26% of opposing baserunners last season, by far a career low; like some of the other great catchers, he may end up with his best offensive and defensive seasons a little mismatched.
Delmon Young's progress remains agonizingly slow, but guys like him have been known to creep forward with little apparent improvement and then suddenly kick up to another level; he's still only 24, and I'd wait to see his 2010, 2011 and maybe 2012 before writing him off as a potential star. But the slow pace of Young's improvement, combined with Denard Span's success and Revere's potential, probably contributed to the decision to cut bait on also waiting for Carlos Gomez to progress, even if it meant losing the last tangible tie to the Santana trade. Anyway, adding Hudson and the offensively erratic Hardy should stabilize the infield.
The big question, as is so often true, is the rotation. Liriano has struggled badly enough that there's been talk of converting him to relief, and don't be surprised if that possibility is explored with Nathan out; Duensing could end up replacing him in the rotation. Assuming the old Liriano doesn't resurface, Baker and Slowey should be the anchors. Slowey posted a 5:1 K/BB ratio last season, but coughed up as many homers as walks, and was shut down after July 3 to have surgery on bone chips in his wrist; in Slowey's last two starts with the injury he surrendered 11 runs and 3 homers in 6 innings, ballooning his ERA from 4.04 to 4.86. Slowey's 0.56 spring ERA suggests he may be all the way back. Blackburn, like Baker and Slowey, has amazing control - the Twinkies and the Cardinals were the only major league teams to walk fewer than 3 men per 9 innings last year - but with his low K rate will depend more on the defense, and thus should benefit most from the arrival of the O-Dog.
Punto and Harris are still grappling over who gets to give away the third base job to the other; Casilla, who I have listed here as an outfielder solely because there was no room to list him as something else, is competing with Tolbert for the backup infield job.
Rauch currently holds the single-season record for most saves (18) by a pitcher who is taller than 6'10". Because you needed to know that.
AJ Pierzynski
Gordon Beckham*
Alexei Ramirez#
Mark Teahen
Juan Pierre
Andruw Jones
Ramon Castro
Omar Vizquel
Mark Kotsay
Jayson Nix*
Jake Peavy
Mark Buehrle
Gavin Floyd
Freddy Garcia
Bobby Jenks
Matt Thornton
Scott Linebrink
Tony Pena
JJ Putz
Subjective Adjustments: None.
Also on Hand: Position players - Brent Lillibridge, who had a horrible 2009. Alejandro de Aza. 24-year-old catcher Tyler Flowers, who improved his career minor league batting line to .293/.406/.495 last season, handled AAA pitching just fine, and got a quick cup of the big league coffee in September. Kenny Williams seems more concerned with Flowers batting .188 in that 10-game trial...I expect him to take over for Pierzynski at some point, but that could be next year unless Pierzynski gets dealt in July.
Pitchers - Sergio Santos, Greg Aquino, Randy Williams, Daniel Hudson, Carlos Torres, Freddy Dolsi, Scott Elarton.
Analysis: As has been the case for a few years now, I'm a little unclear on what the White Sox think they are doing, other than just muddling through in a weak division. On the upside, the double play combination is young and talented, the power hitters are still sort of in their prime other than Jones, the top 4 in their rotation should - if Peavy's healthy - stand up well to anybody but the Red Sox, the bullpen's fairly deep, and as noted there seems to be an orderly succession plan behind the plate. On the downside, Pierre is likely to return to being an offensive millstone and is ill-suited to a power park like whatever they're calling Comiskey these days, and there are serious perennial questions about the attitudes of Quentin, Rios and Jones - if you could give one of those guys Pierre's attitude, you'd be in much better shape (I'm not clear on why Rios is seen as the center fielder here over Pierre). The Jones signing is a gamble, but when you acquire a DH who is 33, overweight and has hit .207/.304/.393 the past three seasons, you need a better Plan B than ... Mark Kotsay? Please tell me they're never gonna wake up one morning with Vizquel as the starting DH.
On balance this looks like a team that can make a run at the division if the Twins stumble and things break well with the rotation (including Garcia, who has a lot to prove after three seasons lost to injury) and the outfield.
Subj. Adj.: 201.25 (80 W)
Gerald Laird
Miguel Cabrera
Scott Sizemore+
Adam Everett
Brandon Inge
Magglio Ordonez
Austin Jackson+
Johnny Damon
Carlos Guillen
Alex Avila*
Ramon Santiago
Ryan Raburn
Clete Thomas#
Rick Porcello*
Max Scherzer#
Jeremy Bonderman
Nate Robertson
Jose Valverde
Joel Zumaya
Bobby Seay
Zach Miner
Ryan Perry*
Subjective Adjustments: The 1.581 multiplier for pitchers age 21 and under is based on a sample of 9 seasons, two of them Felix Hernandez and most of them guys who had not, as Rick Porcello did last year, started 31 games in the majors. Projecting him to leap to 21 Win Shares seemed unrealistic even for optimists about Porcello, who after all struck out only 89 batters last year. I trimmed him down -3 to 18.
Overall, the Tigers are heavily dependent on guys without an established profile; they're the only team in the AL starting two pure rookies (Scott Sizemore and Austin Jackson).
Also on Hand: Position players - Jeff Larish.
Pitchers - Dontrelle Willis, who's had a great spring and isn't out of contention for a rotation slot just yet. Armando Galarraga, deposed from the rotation but still hanging around. Fu-Te Ni, Phil Coke, Daniel Schlereth, Eddie Bonine.
Analysis: The Tigers' question marks start with replacing Curtis Granderson, especially defensively. Jackson is currently penciled in as the heir, although they could still go with Clete Thomas. Sizemore is actually the better hitter at this stage than Jackson (.308/.389/.500 between AA and AAA last season; Jackson's career slugging percentage in the minors is .410), but is two years older, and second basemen with questionable gloves are not always the most likely guys to develop as hitters.
Cabrera is reportedly sobered up and slimmed down; we'll see how much that matters and how long it lasts. My guess is that it's not going to affect his hitting much, but of course being in shape and not hung over is likely to help his baserunning, defense and long-term durability. In a way, it seems almost quaint to see a player whose issue is alcohol.
Much of the rest of the offense is creaky, nonexistent (Everett) and/or likely to struggle in Detroit (Damon).
The pitching staff could be impressive if Scherzer finally has a healthy season and Zumaya holds up. Bonderman's ceiling now looks a lot lower than it once did. And getting Dontrelle back on track could help.
Jason Kendall
Billy Butler
Chris Getz*
Yuniesky Betancourt
Alex Gordon
David DeJesus
Rick Ankiel
Scott Podsednik
Jose Guillen
Brayan Pena
Alberto Callaspo
Mike Aviles#
Gil Meche
Luke Hochevar#
Robinson Tejeda
Brian Bannister
Joakim Soria
Kyle Farnsworth
Kyle Davies
Roman Colon
Also on Hand: Position players - Mitch Maier, last year a frequent starter in the outfield. Wilson Betemit, Willie Bloomquist, Brian Anderson, Vance Wilson.
Pitchers - Where to begin? Bruce Chen (yes, that Bruce Chen), Jorge Campillo, Phil Humber, Brad Thompson, Victor Marte, Josh Rupe, Matt Herges, 37-year-old Yasuhiko Yabuta (who actually pitched much better in his second crack at American minor leaguers in 2009), Rule V pickup Edgar Osuna, Bryan Bullington.
Analysis: A little hope, but not much. Donald Zachary Greinke was so good in so many ways last year that he has to be considered an elite pitcher and not a one-year fluke, but even the elite don't repeat seasons like that. Gordon, once a hyped "next George Brett" by the same people who used the same tag on Hank Blalock, starts the season on the DL, which puts Callaspo at third. Butler is the trendy pick for a breakout, and for good reason: from June 10 to the end of the season he batted .312/.374/.526 with 34 doubles in 101 games, including a blistering stretch of .346/.418/.596 with 45 RBI in 53 games from August 4 to September 30. That may be partly a matter of being a second-half hittter, but it does seem that Butler's making real progress. He also had ridiculous home/road splits: .362/.415/.612 in KC, .240/.307/.372 on the road. Getz had a .324 OBP last year as a rookie, and should improve enough on that to actually be useful.
Then, there's the ugly side, the guys who have neither present nor future. The acquisition of Podsednik is like the White Sox acquisition of Pierre: cheered by Roto players but mostly an investment in a season that's unlikely to be repeated. Both guys remain useful fourth outfiielders miscast as starting corner outfielders. The Royals remain desperate enough for starting pitching that they've considered using Kyle Farnsworth in the rotation. Kendall is durable and ends their experiment with sub-.300 OBPs behind the plate, but he's old, slow, punchless and can't throw. Betancourt's only 27 and has been declining for two years now (from a peak when his OBP was .308). Guillen remains a 34-year-old headache who's been paid $24 million the past two years to bat .257/.305/.415 and block Butler from DHing. Expectations should be limited accordingly.
Maybe they should get Dontrelle; he could probably use some advice in coming back from anxiety problems from Greinke and Ankiel.
Lou Marson+
Russell Branyan
Luis Valbuena*
Asdrubal Cabrera
Jhonny Peralta
Shin-Soo Choo
Grady Sizemore
Michael Brantley*
Travis Hafner
Mike Redmond
Matt LaPorta*
Trevor Crowe
Andy Marte
Jake Westbrook
Fausto Carmona
Justin Masterson#
Aaron Laffey
David Huff*
Rafael Perez
Joe Smith
Tony Sipp*
Jeremy Sowers
Subjective Adjustments: None, but Brantley and LaPorta should produce more than that with more playing time (LaPorta may be platooned with Branyan).
Also on Hand: Position players - Anderson Hernandez, Austin Kearns, Mark Grudzeilanek, Brian Bixler, Chris Gimenez, and smooth catching prospect Carlos Santana.
Pitchers - Chris Perez, Jensen Lewis, Scott Lewis, Anthony Reyes, Tom Mastny, Hector Rondon, Carlos Carrasco, Mitch Talbot. Carrasco and Talbot are seen as in the rotation mix not far down the road.
Analysis: I see Baseball Prospectus has the Indians at 79-83. I get where some of the difference comes from: BP, as it often is with unproven players, is bullish on Masterson and LaPorta and has Brantley, Hafner and Westbrook valued relatively more than EWSL does. I'm not going to argue methods here - EWSL isn't a fine-tuned system like PECOTA, but its blunter approach can be summarized as: show me. Because to meet their PECOTA projections, all of those guys will have to do more in the majors than they've established as a baseline the past three seasons in the majors.
On a gut level, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, most divisions end up with a doormat, and the Indians have the look of a team with a complete mess of a starting rotation and an uneven offense beyond Sizemore and Choo. On the other hand, this division isn't overflowing with the kind of tough competition that hangs a 3-15 record on a team in one or more of its head-to-head matchups. Consider: the Indians last year went 4-14 vs Detroit but 16-20 against the Twins and White Sox; the Royals were 6-12 last year against the Twins but 17-19 against the other two. By contrast, the Orioles last year were 15-39 against NY, Boston and Tampa (including 7-29 against the top two) and the Blue Jays were 17-37 against the trio. Cleveland must look at the Blue Jays and think, there but for the grace of God...speaking of which, one major similarity this team has to Toronto is the destructive effects of a huge contract for a declining player in a collapsing economy, although Hafner's deal is not nearly the long-term millstone that Vernon Wells' is.
POSTSCRIPT: If you're wondering, the AL records, with all adjustments factored in, add up to an average of 82 wins per team, which is actually fairly consistent with the AL's aggregate record in the age of interleague play.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, EWSL is explained here, and you should read that link before commenting on the method; 2010 revisions to the age and rookie adjustments are discussed here.
Bear in mind as always that (1) EWSL is a record of past performance, adjusted by age to give a probabalistic assessment of the available talent on hand; it is not an individualized projection system - EWSL tells you what you should reasonably expect to happen this year if there are no surprises, rather than shedding light on how to spot the surprises before they happen; (2) individual EWSL are rounded off but team totals are compiled from the unrounded figures; and (3) as demonstrated here, here, here, here and here in some detail, nearly all teams will win more games than their EWSL total because I'm only rating 23 players per team. (I'm not convinced going to 24 or 25 would make the system more useful, since it would tend to overrate teams that stuff their back bench slots with aging ex-regulars). That said, I also don't adjust for available playing time, since as a general rule, teams that have excess depth of players with established track records are better off than those that are stretching to cover their whole roster with guys who have proven they can do the job. The line for each team's estimated 2010 W-L record adds EWSL plus 39.42 Win Shares, which is the average number of Win Shares by the rest of the team's roster (i.e., the players other than the 23 listed before the season) over the teams I have tracked the past five seasons (it went up this season, as the average team's EWSL in 2009 undershot its final win total by 41.82 Win Shares).
As always, the depth charts here are drawn from multiple sources (my starting points are the depth charts at Baseball Prospectus.com and RotoTimes, modified by press reports and my own assessments) to list the guys who will do the work (e.g., if there are two guys battling for a fifth starter spot I'll often list one of them with the relievers if I think they'll both end up pitching; in some cases I will list a guy who is starting the year on the DL or in the minors), but I take responsibility for any errors. It's still a fluid time for rosters.
Check out prior years' AL Central reports for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 12:00 PM | Baseball 2010 | Baseball Studies | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: 2010 AL East EWSL Report
Part 2 of my preseason previews is the AL East; this is the second of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I'd suggest you check out the explanations first if you're new to these previews. I've also resurrected for this season the team ages, which are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Prior preview: the AL West.
Raw EWSL: 296.33 (112 W)
Adjusted: 298.90 (113 W)
Age-Adj.: 266.84 (102 W)
2010 W-L: 102-60
Kevin Youkilis
Dustin Pedroia
Marco Scutaro
Adrian Beltre
JD Drew
Mike Cameron
Jason Varitek
Mike Lowell
Jeremy Hermida
Jed Lowrie#
Josh Beckett
Clay Buchholz
Daisuke Matsuzaka
Jon Papelbon
Hideki Okajima
Ramon Ramirez
Daniel Bard*
Tim Wakefield
Subjective Adjustments: None, but bear in mind that EWSL is valuing Lowell, Varitek and Hermida based on being everyday players in 2009, Lowrie in light of extensive playing time in 2008. That's not irrational - teams with that kind of depth often end up needing it, especially Hermida when you consider the injury histories of Drew and Cameron. But in the end, there won't be at bats enough for all of them.
Also on Hand: Position players - Bill Hall (another recently deposed regular!), Josh Reddick, Tug Hulett.
Pitchers - Manny Delcarmen, Joe Nelson, Boof Bonser, Kason Gabbard, Dustin Richardson, Brian Shouse, Fabio Castro, Michael Bowden.
Analysis: This Red Sox team doesn't look offensively strong enough to me to be a real 100-win team, but they and the Yankees are doubtless the strongest teams in the game by a healthy margin, in Boston's case due to their depth, pitching and defense. The rotation has some question marks, especially Matsuzaka and the durability of Lackey, but as with the rest of the roster there are fallbacks. Maybe the biggest vulnerable keystone is Mike Cameron, the oldest guy in the starting lineup and a key to improving Boston's outfield defense; a Drew-Ellsbury-Hermida outfield is not nearly as solid afield.
EWSL recognizes that Lester is really the star of the pitching staff now, and without the tougher road of pitching in Fenway in the AL East, he might be right there with Lincecum, Greinke, King Felix, Santana and maybe Halladay and Sabathia as the game's very best pitchers; as it is, he's at least in the next tier with Verlander, Lee, Wainwright, Haren and Carpenter. But of course Beckett remains the big-game ace.
I remain...I think the proper word is incredulous, rather than skeptical, at Scutaro as a major league everyday shortstop at age 34, but he's built up to this gradually, he's a solid enough bat and defensively the Sawx have Beltre and Pedroia to help cover his sides.
The Defending World Champion Hated Yankees
Mark Teixeira
Nick Swisher
Curtis Granderson
Brett Gardner#
Francisco Cervelli*
Ramiro Pena*
Randy Winn
Marcus Thames
AJ Burnett
Javier Vazquez
Phil Hughes
Joba Chamberlain
Damaso Marte
Alfredo Aceves#
David Robertson#
Subjective Adjustments: None. Winn has the same issue as some of the Red Sox bench, but he's sharing time with Gardner, and while 20 Win Shares seems optimistic for the pair, it's not crazy. Also, the Yankees will need bench depth (both Winn and Marcus Thames) with Nick Johnson in the starting lineup.
Also on Hand: Position players - Mike Rivera, Kevin Russo, Jamie Hoffman.
Pitchers - Jonathan Albaladejo, Chan Ho Park, Sergio Mitre, Kei Igawa, Boone Logan, Royce Ring. Chad Gaudin was released this morning.
Analysis: At every turn, the Yankees have a stronger offense and more impressive-looking frontline talent than the Sox, but they're also older (except in center field) and subject to more uncertainties.
Hughes was named the fifth starter today, sending Joba back to the bullpen. Your guess is as good as mine how long either of those assignments will last, although at some point the Yankees need to make a long-term commitment what they're doing with those two guys. I think the die has been cast now to try Hughes as far as he will go as a rotation starter, but Joba is more enigmatic. He may even need a change of scenery.
A-Rod's streak of consecutive 100-Run/100-RBI seasons ended last year at 11, second only to Lou Gehrig's 13. In 14 major league seasons, he's either driven in 100 runs, scored 100 runs, or (12 times) both, every year.
The re-signing of Joe Mauer in Minnesota, the aging and injuries to A-Rod, and the continuing uncertainty around Joba means that there remains no heir apparent to Rivera, Jeter or Posada. When those guys go, this may be a more different team than anyone now envisions.
Dioner Navarro
Carlos Pena
Jason Bartlett
Evan Longoria#
Matt Joyce#
BJ Upton
Carl Crawford
Pat Burrell
Kelly Shoppach
Willy Aybar
Gabe Kapler
Hank Blalock
James Shields
Matt Garza
Jeff Niemann*
David Price*
Wade Davis*
Rafael Soriano
Dan Wheeler
JP Howell
Grant Balfour
Andy Sonnanstine
Subjective Adjustments: None, but Matt Joyce and Wade Davis, if healthy all year, should well exceed their previously established major league performance.
Also on Hand: Position players - Perennial SS prospect Reid Brignac, Desmond Jennings (who is supposed to be Carl Crawford 2.0, although at the same age, Crawford was entering his fourth season as a major league regular), Sean Rodriguez.
Pitchers - Randy Choate, Joaquin Benoit, Lance Cormier, Winston Abreu, Dale Thayer. Abreu's an interesting "prospect" case: a 33-year-old Dominican who entered the Atlanta system in 1994 (before Chipper Jones' first season as a regular), he's crapped out in brief major league trials (7.31 ERA in 44.1 innings for four teams over three seasons), has pitched in Mexico and Japan - but since 2006, he's thrown 168.2 innings at AAA with a 1.93 ERA and eye-popping peripherals: 5.40 H/9, 0.54 HR/9, 3.00 BB/9, 12.68 K/9.
Analysis: The Brewers had a wonderful collection of talent in the 1978-83 period, but somehow they only put together the one magical pennant (plus a postseason appearance in the scrambled season of 1981). Somehow, they often ended up third. Will that be the fate of these Rays? The good news is, there still seems to be a fair amount of potential upside/bounce-back here. Their Win Shares age marks them as the youngest team in the division (if Baltimore is hoping to rebuild to where the Rays are now, they need to build back in time). BJ Upton, David Price, Pat Burrell, Dioner Navarro and Andy Sonnanstine could hardly have had more disappointing seasons in 2009, and James Shields was off his game as well; Price and Wade Davis could potentially arrive in a hurry. On the other hand, a Navarro-like dropoff could easily plague the three Rays who played massively above expectations last season: Ben Zobrist, Jason Bartlett and Jeff Neimann (Zobrist Win Shares the last three seasons: 1, 8, 27). Check out how Tampa's infield, powered by Zobrist and Bartlett, stacked up last season against their division rivals:
Average starting infielder, 2009:
(Poor Nick Green has the honor of dragging down the Red Sox. Note the low GIDP total for the Rays despite Longoria hitting into 27 despite batting third behind Crawford all year, mostly with Upton or Bartlett leading off - that high a total suggests that it's in the team's interests for Crawford in particular to run more ahead of him to avoid that this year, although as it is he ran 76 times last season). Niemann is perhaps unfairly lumped in that group, as he had a fine minor league record, and his signature skill (a low HR rate) has persisted at every level; if he can bump up his K rate even a little from 6.2 K/9 last season (it was 9.1 for his minor league career), he could be a star.
Boy, this division has some 24-year-old pitchers, doesn't it?
Navarro sounds as if he'll be reasonably ready to start the season despite a horrific spring training collision with Jacque Jones, who's fighting tooth and nail for a roster spot on the Twins.
Matt Wieters*
Garrett Atkins
Brian Roberts
Cesar Izturis
Miguel Tejada
Adam Jones#
Nolan Reimold*
Luke Scott
Chad Moeller
Ty Wigginton
Felix Pie
Robert Andino#
Kevin Millwood
Jeremy Guthrie
Brad Bergesen*
Brian Matusz*
Chris Tillman*
Mike Gonzalez
Cla Meredith
Koji Uehara*
Mark Hendrickson
Also on Hand: Position players - Jeff Salazar, Lou Montanez, Michael Aubrey.
Pitchers - Matt Albers, Dennis Sarfate, Alfredo Simon, Will Ohman.
Analysis: In another division, I'd be guardedly optimistic; the Orioles finally seem to be getting their rotation together, their outfield is reasonably young and talented, Wieters still looks like an eventual superstar if not the immediate one everybody predicted last season, and the infield and bullpen are at least anchored mostly by competent veterans (Gonzalez, like Soriano with the Rays, was heisted from a Braves franchise disproportionately disgusted with its bullpen help). Granted, there are trouble signs: Millwood has been terrible this spring, Markakis could just as easily turn into Ben Grieve rather than Carl Yastrzemski, Reimold may not repeat last season's pleasant surprise, and any of the trio of Matusz, Bergesen, and Tillman could easily go the way of so many promising young pitchers. But the main problem the Orioles face is 54 games on their schedule with the Beasts of the East.
I swear, I will spend the next several years muttering "e before i spells Greinke, i before e spells Wieters."
Tejada has averaged 27 GIDP per year the past four seasons, leading the league five times in six years; he hasn't yet cracked Jim Rice's surprisingly durable single-season record of 36.
Luke Scott's Win Shares the past three seasons: 11, 11, 11. That's an established performance level.
John Buck
Lyle Overbay
Alex Gonzalez
Edwin Encarnacion
Vernon Wells
Travis Snider*
Jose Molina
Jeremy Reed
Randy Ruiz*
Ricky Romero*
Shaun Marcum
Scott Richmond*
Brandon Morrow
Marc Rzepcynski*
Jason Frasor
Scott Downs
Jeremy Accardo
Kevin Gregg
Shawn Camp
Subjective Adjustments: None. This is all there is, folks. But Snider should beat 8 WS if he's in the lineup all year.
Also on Hand: Position players - Raul Chavez, Joey Gathright, Jorge Padilla, Jarrett Hoffpauir.
Pitchers - Plenty of about the same quality as the guys listed above: Brian Tallet, Brett Cecil, Dana Eveland, David Purcey, Jesse Carlson, Dustin McGowan, Jesse Litsch.
Analysis: 2010 marketing slogan: "Hey, we already paid them." Marcum, who did not throw a pitch last season, has been named to start Opening Day, replacing the departed (liberated?) Roy Halladay. The Yankees, Sox and Rays may be tough places to break in as a young starting pitcher given the pressures, but Baltimore and Toronto are even less enviable, especially Toronto without Millwood: the youngsters (in Richmond's case, not even young) have to carry the front of the rotation on top of facing all those tough opponents.
The Jays aren't so desperately under-talented - there's at least a plausible gap-filler at most every position, and the bullpen's deep enough in decent arms that they should eventually be able to figure out which ones are going to pitch well this year - but in this division, with so little front-line talent and an unproven rotation, I'll be surprised if they avoid 100 losses.
You can compare the prior AL East roundups for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 1:00 PM | Baseball 2010 | Baseball Studies | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: 2010 AL West EWSL Report
Part 1 of my preseason previews is the AL West; this is the first of six division previews, using Established Win Shares Levels as a jumping-off point. Notes and reference links on the EWSL method are below the fold; while EWSL is a simple enough method that will be familiar to long-time readers, it takes a little introductory explaining, so I'd suggest you check out the explanations first if you're new to these previews. I've also resurrected for this season the team ages, which are weighted by non-age-adjusted EWSL, so the best players count more towards determining the age of the roster.
Subj. Adj: 216.33 (85 W)
Adam Moore+
Casey Kotchman
Jack Wilson
Chone Figgins
Ichiro Suzuki
Franklin Gutierrez
Milton Bradley
Rob Johnson*
Ryan Langerhans
Eric Byrnes
Felix Hernandez
Cliff Lee
Erik Bedard
Ian Snell
Ryan Rowland-Smith
David Aardsma
Sean White
Brandon League
Shawn Kelley*
Subjective Adjustments: As I did last season, I'm trying to be very sparing with introducing purely subjective adjustments into what is intended to be an objective system, but sometimes you have to have a sanity check. I'm docking 2 Win Shares from Adam Moore, the Mariners' rookie catcher, because I can't quite value the combination of him and weak-hitting #2 catcher Rob Johnson as being cumulatively worth 20 Win Shares, and given the choice between the two, I prefer to dock the guy who is less proven. That said, Moore's career line in the minors is .301/.369/.483; even factoring in the very large adjustment from a Class A hitters' haven like High Desert to Safeco, that suggests a guy who will bring noticeably more pop than the punchless Johnson.
Also on Hand: Position players - Jack Hannahan, Matt Tuiasosopo, Corey Patterson, Mike Sweeney, Mike Carp, Josh Bard, Michael Saunders.
Pitchers - Luke French, Jason Vargas, Yusmiero Petit, Garrett Olson, Kanekoa Texeira, Randy Messenger, Ryan Feierabend. French appears to be the favorite to take Bedard's rotation slot until when and if Bedard is ever ready to pitch, and with Cliff Lee starting the season shelved with an abdominal strain, the staff may need to dig deeper than that. French put in three very undistinguished seasons in the Tigers' system before reeling off 13 excellent starts at AAA Toledo last year, posting a 2.98 ERA and improving his K/BB ratio to 3.6 from 1.47, earning him a promotion. He had a 3.38 ERA but weak peripherals with Detroit before arriving in Seattle, where he surrendered a ghastly 2.1 homers per 9 innings in 38 innings of work. So, French should be regarded as a work in progress.
Analysis: Probably no team moved as aggressively or with as clear a plan in mind in the offseason as the Mariners, a franchise adrift for much of the past 6 years despite occasional youth movements and spurts at overachieving contention-like records (last season's 85 wins exceeded their Pythagorean record - i.e., their record as predicted from runs scored and allowed - by 10 games). The reason was obvious: they saw an opportunity and a limited window to grab it. The opportunity came in the form of the Angels' free agency losses - John Lackey, Chone Figgins, Vlad Guerrero, on the heels of last year's losses of Francisco Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Jon Garland and Garret Anderson. It's cold comfort to Angels fans that many of those guys were declining commodities unlikely to match their prior production in Anaheim; the point was that that prior production will be hard to replace, leaving the team that dominated this division to the tune of five division titles in six years suddenly vulnerable. At the same time, with star Ichiro Suzuki now 36 and Felix Hernandez subject to the usual concerns about how long a very young pitcher can stay on top before he breaks down, the team had a sense of urgency about seizing this opportunity.
The Mariners' plan wasn't brilliant, but you can accomplish quite a lot just by knowing what you want to do and sticking with it. They snagged Figgins from the Angels, which killed two birds with one stone, depriving the Angels of his services and importing a slap hitter more suited to Safeco than departing underachieving slugger Adrian Beltre. Even if Figgins can't sustain his improvement in walks last season, he'll be a solid addition in the short run. Casey Kotchman was brought in to soften the blow of Russell Branyan's departure, and while Kotchman is a fairly punchless hitter, he's just hitting age 27 and he and Milton Bradley are both guys who similarly don't depend on the home run for their offensive value (Kotchman may end up platooned with Ryan Garko at first). Ditto for stretch-drive acquisition Jack Wilson at short and scrap heap claim Eric Byrnes.
On the pitching side, bringing in Cliff Lee was part of a larger project (along with last season's addition of Ian Snell) to prop up the Mariners' low team strikeout rate (only Felix Hernandez notched more than 90 Ks last season), rendering them less dependent on repeating last season's AL-best-by-a-wide-margin .712 Defensive Efficiency Rate, and enable the team to re-sign the rehabbing Erik Bedard without having to bank on him as the #2 starter.
Not everything fit the pattern, of course; the team re-upped 40-year-old Ken Griffey jr. to DH (assuming Bradley can play left), after Griffey hit .214, albeit with a really freaky home-road split in which he mauled opposing pitchers at Safeco but was utterly helpless on the road. But Griffey is apparently supposed to provide veteran leadership. If he falls on his face in a "Willie Mays, 1973" way, the Mariners don't have a ton of hitting depth to cover the LF/DH spots, especially if Bradley is, as usual, frequently unavailable. Griffey is the most extreme example of a division-wide trend: the average AL West DH is 36 years old this season.
Clearing 90 wins by more than a hair will be an uphill battle for Seattle unless Lee, Bedard, and Snell suddenly all get healthy and back to top form at once - like the rest of this division, the Mariners are out of the wild card race before the season starts, when you look at the AL East - but this team has definitely made the moves necessary to swipe a division title if one can be had in the high 80s.
Mike Napoli
Kendry Morales
Howie Kendrick
Erick Aybar
Brandon Wood#
Bobby Abreu
Torii Hunter
Juan Rivera
Hideki Matsui
Jeff Mathis
Macier Izturis
Reggie Willits
Freddy Sandoval+
Jered Weaver
Ervin Santana
Joel Pineiro
Brian Fuentes
Fernando Rodney
Brian Stokes
Jason Bulger*
Kevin Jepsen*
Subjective Adjustments: None, although I expect Brandon Wood to finally establish himself as a reputable major league hitter after cracking 160 home runs in a long minor league career that saw him bat .272/.338/.497, .296/.375/.595, and .293/.353/.557 over the past three full seasons at AAA. Also, one assumes that Kendry Morales will do better than 12 Win Shares, but I don't argue with EWSL's bias against guys like Wood and Morales whose recent history still includes flopping in extended trials against big-league competition.
Also on Hand: Position players - Robb Quinlan.
Pitchers - Scot Shields, Sean O'Sullivan. The stability of the Angels, even with all the free agent losses, is reflected in how few battles for roster spots and starting jobs they have this spring; if everybody's healthy, you'll know who their players are.
Analysis: Mike Scioscia also knows what he's doing, though I'm starting to worry he's suffering from Gene Mauch/Buck Rogers Syndrome, where the ownership assumes he can keep winning without having to supply him with quality players. Notice, as is often the case with the Angels, the focus on prime talent: the roster above includes two 25-year-olds, three 26-year-olds, five 27-year-olds, a 28-year-old, and three 29-year-olds - more than half the roster in that age cohort, and except for the outfield (where Abreu's age remains a concern) the age is mostly concentrated in the bullpen. That's a similar distribution to the one I noted in the 2002 World Champs.
That said, the Angels' fate will rest with the health of their starting rotation, especially the power pitchers. Kazmir needs to rebound, and recent reports are not optimistic about Ervin Santana. And I remain skeptical that Pineiro can keep his walk and home run rates sufficiently microscopic to survive his inability to strike anybody out. If Weaver and Saunders end up as this team's 1-2 starters, they're in trouble and could easily sink below .500.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia
Chris Davis#
Ian Kinsler
Elvis Andrus*
Julio Borbon*
Vladimir Guerrero
Taylor Teagarden*
Joaquin Arias#
Endy Chavez
Scott Feldman
Rich Harden
Tommy Hunter*
Derek Holland*
Frank Francisco
CJ Wilson
Darren O'Day#
Darren Oliver
Naftali Feliz*
Subjective Adjustments: A primary reason why I added subjective adjustments was what I think of as the Khalil Greene problem, since he's one of the first (but not the last) second-year shortstops to exhibit it: EWSL assesses a very young hitter as having a lot of rapid room for growth, but as a result it tends to overvalue second-year hitters who are (1) under age 25 and (2) have a disproportionate amount of their value in their gloves. Nobody improves that much defensively from a good start in one year. So, rather than 21 Win Shares, I've trimmed back Elvis Andrus by 2 Win Shares to 19, which is still +2 from last year's total of 17.
Also on Hand: Position players - Esteban German, Max Ramirez, Brandon Boggs, Toby Hall. Ramirez is the third of Texas' troika of hugely hyped young catchers, but he had a .234/.323/.336 train wreck of a season at AAA last year, and with Saltalamacchia and Teagarden scuffling at the major league level, suddenly nobody's talking about this as the second coming of the Giants' McCovey vs Cepeda problem.
Pitchers - Colby Lewis (who's been in Japan and may end up in the rotation), sometime closer Chris Ray, Edwar Ramirez, Matt Harrison, Dustin Nippert, Doug Mathis.
Analysis: The story has been the same for years: the sun is rise, the sun is set, and there's no pitching in Texas yet. Have we finally turned a corner? Certainly, this team's pitching doesn't present the ghastly hue that doomed past Rangers squads to the cellar. Last season's 4.57 team ERA was actually better than the league average, especially when adjusted for the park. Scott Feldman's one-season improvement suggests a guy who can serve as an innings-eater (though 0.9 HR, 3.1 BB & 5.4 K/9 are decent numbers, but don't foretell much more room for growth, esepcially after two seasons of being pounded). Whether he stays in middle relief or becomes a Joba Rules-style starter, Naftali Feliz has an enormous upside as a power pitcher. Young control/groundball starter Tommy Hunter had a good ERA last season, while Derek Holland, who struggled, struck out more than twice as many as he walked (7.0 K, 3.1 BB, but a frightening 1.7 HR/9) following a fairly spectacular tour through the minor leagues (career rates of 0.4 HR, 2.6 BB, 9.9 K, albeit mostly in A ball). Rich Harden - who's only a year older than Feldman - is on hand, bringing the same gambler's chance to Texas that Bedard and Snell bring to Seattle, Kazmir and Santana to Anaheim, and Ben Sheets and Justin Duchscherer to Oakland. For once, there's some hope. But in the short run, the pitching will have an uphill battle to match last season with the departure of staff ace Kevin Millwood, the dependence on young pitchers and potentially erratic setup men and the mercurial Harden.
(UPDATE: It currently looks like the Rangers will be trying CJ Wilson in the rotation and McCarthy in the bullpen, but we'll see how long that experiment lasts.)
The offense was more unreliable last season. Kinsler's 30-30 numbers made Roto fans happy, but a .253 batting average just isn't enough in a park like Texas. Andrus was adequate and promising, but still isn't an offensive plus. Davis needs to arrest his strike zone problems before his career vanishes. And one of the catchers needs to step up.
Vlad Guerrero was a good gamble - he fell off last season and could be almost done, but guys with his talent and track record have been known to bust out with one last gasp around this age, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least to see him notch a season like Andres Galarraga's first year in Atlanta, Juan Gonzalez' first year in Cleveland, Frank Thomas' first year in Oakland, or Gary Gaetti's 1995 with Kansas City.
Kurt Suzuki
Daric Barton#
Cliff Pennington*
Kevin Kouzmanoff
Ryan Sweeney#
Coco Crisp
Rajai Davis
Jack Cust
Landon Powell*
Jake Fox*
Gabe Gross
Eric Patterson*
Ben Sheets
Brett Anderson*
Dallas Braden
Trevor Cahill*
Andrew Bailey*
Brad Ziegler#
Michael Wuertz
Craig Breslow
Joey Devine#
Also on Hand: Position players - Travis Buck, a supposedly healthy Eric Chavez.
Pitchers - Gio Gonzalez, Vin Mazzaro, Lenny DiNardo, Brett Tomko, Jerry Blevins, Clayton Mortenson. Also Josh Outman, the obligatory Tommy John rehab case.
Analysis: Sure, Billy Beane's vaunted "Moneyball" savvy and bargain-hunting skills are widely revered. Sure, he's spun silk from a sow's ear repeatedly with Chad Bradford- and Scott Hatteberg-style scrap heap finds. Sure, every year when I do my post-season EWSL wrapups, the A's are at or near the top of the list of teams getting the most Win Shares from guys not even on their preseason 23-man lineup, attesting to Beane's ongoing ability to retool his teams on the fly.
But look back at the glory days of Beane's A's and you'll notice something else: Jason Giambi won the MVP Award in 2000 and was the runnerup the following year, batting .338/.476/.653 over those two seasons; Miguel Tejada won the award in 2002 and averaged 30 HR and 116 RBI from 2000-2003. Barry Zito won the Cy Young Award in 2002, going 23-5. Ben Grieve was Rookie of the Year in 1998, Bobby Crosby in 2004, Huston Street in 2005. Tim Hudson went 20-6 in 2000, and finished 2d, 4th and 6th in the Cy Young balloting over a four-year period. Mark Mulder had 21- and 19-win seasons back to back, finishing second in the Cy Young balloting in 2001. Eric Chavez averaged 100 RBI per year from 2001-2005. In short: the A's had stars, big ones, most of them homegrown along with star-level seasons from acquisitions like Jermaine Dye, Matt Stairs and John Jaha.
That's what's missing now from a team whose best everyday player is...Kevin Kouzmanoff? Kurt Suzuki? Ryan Sweeney? Rajai Davis? Ugh. You can hold together a battleship with duct tape, but you need a battleship first.
The A's have the usual array of young pitchers, granting that none of the starters are blazing from the minor league gate as Hudson and Zito did, and Sheets and Duchscherer are rolls of the dice. The bullpen could be outstanding, but beware of their various aches and pains: Bailey was a great surprise last season but spring soreness could portend a guy who takes a step back after flying too close to the sun for a year, and Breslow and Devine are also various shades of banged up. I expect Beane to press enough buttons to keep Oakland around .500, but for more than that, they need to wish upon a star.
Check out previous AL West previews from 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004.
POLITICS: Unflexible
There will be many more things coming out about Obamacare as we finally get a fix on what was in the massive final bill, like the provisions exempting senior Congressional staff from its provisions or Jim Webb's worry that some military plans were not properly exempted from the bill.
Francis Cianfrocca looks at the foolishness of Obamacare slashing the tax exemption for flexible spending accounts. Health savings accounts and other flexible spending accounts, combined with high-deductible health plans, are one of the few ways we have to impose price discipline on care itself, and that's being replaced by a plan that puts massive upward pressure on the price of insurance, at the demand side by mandating its purchase by everyone and on the cost side by imposing a battery of restrictions on insurers' ability to evaluate risk or provide choice in what kind of coverage can be included in a plan. Personally, I recently switched my family to a high-deductible plan to avoid the rising rates of full-service plans, and on top of its various other bad effects the bill will limit my ability to use pretax funds to pay for healthcare; lots of people will be in the same boat, especially small business owners and employees and others among the self-employed who may not work for large organizations.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 3:29 PM | Politics 2010 | Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)
LAW: Triple FAIL
Here's the opening of the syllabus of today's lone Supreme Court opinion, United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa, No. 08-1134, a unanimous decision written by Justice Thomas:
A plan proposed under Bankruptcy Code (Code) Chapter 13 becomes effective upon confirmation, see 11 U. S. C. ss1324, 1325, and will re-sult in a discharge of the debts listed in the plan if the debtor completes the payments the plan requires, see s1328(a). A debtor may obtain a discharge of government-sponsored student loan debts only if failure to discharge that debt would impose an "undue hardship" on the debtor and his dependents. ss523(a)(8); 1328. Bankruptcy courts must make this undue hardship determination in an adversary proceeding, see Fed. Rule Bkrtcy. Proc. 7001(6), which the party seeking the determination must initiate by serving a summons and complaint on his adversary, see Rules 7003, 7004, 7008. Respondent Espinosa's plan proposed repaying the principal on his student loan debt and discharging the interest once the principal was repaid, but he did not initiate the required adversary proceeding. The student loan creditor, petitioner United, received notice of the plan from the Bankruptcy Court and did not object to the plan or to Espinosa's failure to initiate the required proceeding. The Bankruptcy Court confirmed the plan without holding such a proceeding or making a finding of undue hardship. Once Espinosa paid his student loan principal, the court discharged the interest. A few years later, the Department of Education sought to collect that interest.
If you're keeping score at home:
(1) The debtor failed to use the proper procedure to request the discharge of his interest obligations;
(2) The creditor failed to object when given notice of this defective proceeding; and
(3) The court failed to make the necessary findings to justify the discharge.
Can't anybody play this game?
Sensibly enough, after being presented with this train wreck of mutual malpractice, the Court decided to let sleeping dogs lie, holding that the creditor couldn't go back later on and reopen the judgment, having failed to object at the time (the creditor had argued, and the Ninth Circuit had agreed, that the court's failure to make the hardship finding was equivalent to acting without jurisdiction and thus voided the judgment even without a timely objection).
Posted by Baseball Crank at 10:10 AM | Law 2009-14 | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: The Top Ten (Twelve, Actually)
Continuing my warmup posts on Established Win Shares Levels, since I have kept you all waiting for the team previews, here's how the method, with the updated 2010 age adjustments, values the top 10 players (actually twelve, as I'm listing the guys who are essentially tied at 26 EWSL) in the game in terms of established performance level adjusted by age. EWSL is explained here. Chart below the fold.
Age%
EWSL
Hanley Ramirez
Prince Fielder
Note that two of these guys, Upton and Longoria, are rated based on two rather than three years' worth of playing time. Upton in particular is given a heavy dose of high expectations based on historic growth rates for players his age, but of course some of that is due to the fact that guys his age are often transitioning from half-season rookie seasons to full-time jobs.
As usual, bear in mind as well that the age adjustments are blanket; the system treats Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder as typical of their ages, regardless of body type, etc. That said, if this isn't actually a list of the game's 12 most valuable players to have entering the 2010 season, it's probably not that far off.
If you're wondering, Felix Hernandez and Zack Greinke are the only pitchers rated at 20 EWSL or greater, while the top-rated reliever is Joakim Soria.
BASEBALL: EWSL 2010 Age and Rookie Baselines
It's time once again, however belatedly, for my annual division previews using Established Win Shares Levels, which are explained here. Before we get to rolling out the 2010 EWSLs, I have to update the age adjustments and rookie values I use each year. These are based on the data I have gathered over the past six seasons, and so with each passing year, one would hope they become progressively more stable and useful in evaluating the established talent base on hand for each team entering each season. As a reminder: EWSL is not a prediction system. It's a way of assessing the resources on hand. Time, chance, and mid-season replacements happen to all.
First up is the age adjustments; I've reformatted the table a bit from year to year. See my writeups on the age adjustments following the 2004 season - also here - 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons. Here's the 2009 age adjustments (i.e, how each age of non-pitcher or pitcher stacked up to their un-age-adjusted EWSL), and the totals for 2004-09 - in some ways, if you study these sorts of things, the numbers accumulated over this many seasons become interesting in themselves:
It was a tough year for the 28-year-olds and the over-35 crowd, but the 30- and 35-year-olds had a banner year, confounding prior trends of age 35 being a dramatic falloff. The 30-year-olds were bolstered by players like Nick Johnson and Victor Martinez rebounding from injury, while the 35-year-old cohort was strong in depth - Jeter, Tejada, Helton, Ichiro, Damon, Abreu, Casey Blake. That said, history still cautions to beware of 35-year-olds.
Then, the pitchers:
Tough year all around, with the rot setting in as early as age 27 - the dramatic falloff in pitchers in their late 20s is driven heavily by injuries - while the age 34-36 survivors, though few in number, prospered, though other than Chris Carpenter it was mostly low-expectations relievers.
Finally, the rookie adjustments:
Type of Player
# in 2009
WS in 2009
WS 2004-09
Everyday Players
Bench Players (Under 30)
Bench Players (Age 30+)
Rotation Starters
Relief Pitchers
Not a whole lot of alteration to historical patterns there.
POLITICS: No Quarter: How Left-Wing Blogs Seek To Destroy Rather Than Debate
If you have been reading or writing blogs for some time, you may recall the early, heady days of the blogosphere back around 2002-03. Many of us old-school bloggers started back then (I started writing baseball on the web in May 2000, and political blogging in August 2002; RedState wouldn't be founded until the summer of 2004). The blog world was a small town in those days, where everybody knew everybody, nobody was too big to respond to emails, comments or trackbacks (remember trackbacks?), and for all the fire of political debate, there was a broad-based sense that blogs constituted a community of interest that crossed party lines. Bloggers were glad to see recognition given to blogs and bloggers, engaged in debate across ideological lines, and in some cases informal alliances sprung up, as when blogs on the right and left alike united to drive media interest in ousting Trent Lott as GOP Senate Majority Leader after the 2002 elections over his comments about Strom Thurmond. Sites like The Command Post, which followed the blow-by-blow of the Iraq War, featured contributors from both sides of the political spectrum (myself included, along with others who would later become contributors at RedState). I don't want to overstate the degree of comity or idealize that era, but there was at least some degree of prevailing ethos that bloggers - amateurs using the internet to gather news and offer citizen punditry - had something in common even when their partisan and ideological interests diverged.
Those days are long, long gone. The coordinated and utterly predictable left-wing assault on CNN's hiring of RedState leader Erick Erickson over the past few days is merely the latest illustration of how the left side of the blogosphere sees it as its role not to debate conservative bloggers and pundits, but to destroy us and preclude us from being heard. Nobody on our side of the aisle should be under any illusion about the depths of personal enmity harbored towards us by the left blogs, nor the fact that they will spare no effort to go after us personally. These are not good people, they are not our friends, and they mean us harm.
It's debatable when and why the change came in the blogosphere, although it's clear it was driven from the Left - in many ways, with a few exceptions like Erick and the HotAir and BigGovernment sites, the right-wing blogs are the same collection of amateur part-timers, with the same leadership and the same demeanor and methods as we had in 2002. Partly it was the Left's increasing bitterness after their thumping in the 2002 elections exposed the fiction of their view that Bush's victory in 2000 was an illegitimate aberration. Partly it was the increasing partisan temperature that came with the Iraq War. Partly it was the nature of the Online Left as people: dissatisfied with the existing order of society, often childless and thus with more time on their hands and fewer checks on perpetual immaturity, apt to treat the personal as political and the political as personal, and frequently irreligious and tending to put politics in the place where others put religion. Perhaps the influence of Markos Moulitsas as the leading figure in the left-wing blogosphere could be blamed as well, although I regard the explosive growth of Daily Kos more as a symptom than the underlying cause.
But most likely the largest cause of all was money and the lust for power. With its party leadership discredited and its official organs subject to campaign finance laws that don't regulate blogs, the Left began pouring serious money and man-hours into the blogosphere after the 2002 elections. Billionaire George Soros (also a chief funder of think tanks like John Podesta's Center for American Progress, founded in 2003) was the most prominent of these donors/investors, but hardly the only one; Arianna Huffington was another. Left-wing interest groups like SEIU and other unions mustered advertising dollars for major left-blogs, effectively putting them on retainer. That gave the blogs the tools to do activism, polling, fundraising, investigative muckracking, and simply to generate a lot of ways to go after people and waste their time. Daily Kos, TPM, MediaMatters, ThinkProgress.org, the Huffington Post...these sites were increasingly staffed by full-time employees, tasked with taking out people on the Right, in MediaMatters' case explicitly focused on conservative pundits. One by one, major left-bloggers became professionalized. Moulitsas lived off "advertising" revenue, Glenn Greenwald (already independently wealthy) got hired by Salon, Kevin Drum by Washington Monthly, Ana Marie Cox by Time, Phil Carter got paid by Slate and the Washington Post, people like Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein and Oliver Willis got blogging jobs straight out of college, funded by various combinations of employment by supposedly non-partisan mainstream media organizations (the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly) and left-wing funders; others like Jane Hamsher and John Aravosis also apparently work full-time as bloggers. Today, the WaPo employs both Klein and TPM veteran activist Greg Sargent; Washington Monthly employs Steven Benen; HuffPo employs a variety of people, including Klein's former co-blogger Nico Pitney. And a host of left-wing bloggers are regulars on MSNBC, a putatively major cable news network. By contrast, sites like RedState and the New Ledger are staffed almost entirely by volunteers with day jobs outside politics.
The professionalization of the Online Left created a sense of entitlement - left-bloggers tended not only to crusade for their policy goals, but to work for a personal seat at the table for themselves and their colleagues, becoming an interest group of their own and thus even more personally invested in the accretion of power to their own side. Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong even wrote a book entitled "Crashing the Gate" about their drive to gain power within their party. Today, left-bloggers are feted at the White House. One of the most incendiary left-wing bloggers, Matt Stoller, got a job working for Florida Congressman Alan Grayson.
What disappeared along the way was any semblance of a sense that left-wingers should debate the Right, or even accept as legitimate the existence of conservative bloggers and pundits as participants in public debate. An early sign of this came when the Washington Post hired Ben Domenech, another of RedState's founders, in 2005. Never mind that WaPo was trying to pair him with a liberal writer, or that WaPo has always had a liberal editorial page and many more liberal than conservative op-ed writers; the Online Left started a viciously gleeful, single-minded crusade to get Ben fired, coming up with one ridiculous attack on him after another. Unfortunately, they eventually found one that stuck (some plagiarized movie reviews from his college-age years), he had to leave the job, and WaPo never replaced him with another conservative blogger. Yet when the paper hired Klein (who had volunteered with the Dean campaign in 2004) and Sargent, and essentially presented them as nonpartisan pundits (as compared to the "Red America" tagline on Ben's columns) conservatives complained and continue to poke fun at them (I know I have), but never made anything like a similarly coordinated effort to get them fired. Not that we couldn't have spent time digging through their archives for choice tidbits like Klein Tweeting "f**k tim russert. f**k him with a spiky acid-tipped d**k" (although Klein has prudently buried most of his old blogs, see here, here and here).
The effort to not only disagree with conservatives but agitate to have them driven from the public square is endemic with these paid, professional left-bloggers. Sargent, Greenwald and Benen complain constantly about Dick and Liz Cheney being permitted on TV and covered in the press. Left-bloggers pressed MSNBC for some time to get rid of Pat Buchanan, despite (1) the network's overwhelming leftward tilt and (2) the fact that Buchanan isn't even a particularly good or representative spokesman for the GOP or conservatives. They campaigned to get Lou Dobbs, a populist who's similarly only vaguely conservative, off CNN. There's been a long-running campaign to attack the advertisers for Glenn Beck, and with a fair amount of success despite Beck's sterling ratings. The common thread is that the Online Left isn't content to debate these people; they want them to be defunded, unemployed and unheard by the public, while they themselves reap funding from like-minded donors and interest groups.
(In the extreme example, conservative blogger Jeff Goldstein received sufficiently threatening emails towards his then 2-year-old son from a mentally disturbed left-wing stalker that he obtained a restraining order against her.).
Which brings us to the energy and bile that these paid tools of the left have directed at CNN - which is trying to reach out to the viewers that have consistently made rival FOX News the cable-news ratings champ - in an open effort to get Erick's hiring rescinded and ensure that CNN's viewers are not exposed to his opinions. The volume of material churned out by the left blogs, especially the paid ones, is too massive for me to excerpt or link it all here, but I'll offer a few samples:
-An organized campaign to flood CNN, especially its Twitter feed and those of its employees and on-air personalities, with complaints, and to pressure its advertisers to try to get Erick fired, was ginned up by nasty, foul-mouthed left-blogger Shoq. The campaign includes a "DumpCNN" Twitter feed (at last check: 89 tweets just since Tuesday). Some sample tweets from Shoq and DumpCNN:
"@CNN JOINS REDSTATE.COm The best fascist website on the intertubes. http://bit.ly/cGgxS1 cc @stevebruskCNN"
"CLICK to send letter to @samFeistCNN & @jonKleinCNN, demanding they abort absurd Erickson idea. http://bit.ly/cq2GCn"
".@CNN and @johnKingCNN @samFeistCNN You'll be happy to know that 2 of your biggest sponsors are watching.. with great discomfort."
"Shoq .@jonKleinCNN @samFeistCNN When @Stopbeck began, they had handful of ppl on Facebook for months. It's cost Fox 100+ sponsors."
".@stopbeck @dumpCNN Email me the list of CNN sponsors. They should know what is coming. c c @samFeistCNN @jenCNNpr"
"After @CNN starts losing sponsors, perhaps they'll fill the void by entertaining us with hologram magic."
"I think we should block ALL CNN twitter accounts"
"Why undermine our effort by supporting CNN? RT @janehamsher: I'll be on the online premiere of @JohnKingCNN tomorrow..."
-Eric Boehlert, paid staffer for Media Matters, has griped at length about Erick's hiring on his Twitter feed and the MMFA website, comparing him unfavorably to such solons of non-partisan news commentary as former Clinton campaign staffers Paul Begala and James Carville (while ignoring entirely why CNN wanted Erick - not just as an effort to win back viewers from Fox but because of his growing influence as an activist voice for the next generation of Republicans). Boehlert promoted the "DumpCNN" twitter feed and tweeted complaints at CNN. Perhaps Boehlert's most hilarious tweet was his claim that "the weird part is the Left doesn't have an Erick Erickson for CNN to hire; somebody that hateful and unethical to pontificate." (Apparently he's forgotten, among too many other examples to cite here, Moulitsas' famous reaction of "screw them" to the death of American contractors in Iraq).
For more MediaMatters attacks on Erick's hiring, see here, here, here, and here. This is an extensive deployment of paid resources to attack a single hire of a commentator.
-Moulitsas' initial reaction on Twitter was a lame joke, before stepping up to gripe, "HIs dream job is Al Qaida. CNN just a stepping stone." See also this, this, and a handful of retweets of other people.
-Greenwald similarly started off with something lame, then got gradually unhinged:
"[I]if CNN is pro-Terrorist, and Erickson works for them, shouldn't he be accusing himself of treason and want himself tortured?"
"Where's Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol when you need them? Wonder what they think about Erick Erickson working for a pro-Al-Qaeda outlet?"
"Is CNN balancing Erick Erickson with some Democrats' Pol Pot?"
-Salon was similarly apoplectic: "What was CNN thinking with latest hire?" The Salon article called Erick a "spinner," which is kind of a ridiculous argument considering that CNN already employs Begala and Carville; Begala is the Platonic embodiment of spin. But the Salon article nonetheless admitted that "Erickson is remarkably well plugged into the Republican establishment these days, and is a good barometer of where tea partiers will end up -- he was one of the earliest supporters of both Doug Hoffman and Marco Rubio, for example."
-Cox's reactions here and here.
-Willis pestered Ed Henry of CNN on Twitter here, here, here, and declared here, "feel like ed henry is reading now and realizing what a mistake he made defending erickson. heh." More Willis tweets here, here, here, here, here and here.
-Benen tweeted that "CNN's Erickson hire marks a genuinely sad for American journalism" and went after Erick's hiring at length from his paid position at Washington Monthly here, naturally with the disclaimer he always adds, when arguing against putting conservatives on television, that of course he's not against putting conservatives on television, just whoever he happens to be writing about in a given post.
-Greg Mitchell, formerly of the defunct Editor & Publisher, complained about CNN even wanting to recapture viewers disenchanted with the network's reputation for disdain for conservatives and conservative viewpoints: "Why are those "the very people" John [King] hopes to reach?"
-Atrios, at one time a prominent left-wing blogger, whined, "dear cnn, "the best political team" by definition cannot include someone as stupid as erick erickson" Atrios then went on to tweet his complaints to CNN's Twitter feed while passing along something Erick supposedly wrote "Three days before CNN hires" him, although the post was obviously dated 2008.
-Crooks and Liars went after Erick at length here:
Red State is the heavily-funded, longstanding arm of the Republican wingnut online noise machine. Erickson is a propaganda-spinner, a liar and a troll.
I don't know where these guys get their ideas about RS' funding. If we were enormously well-funded, I think I'd know about that. The post that had to be edited for failing even Crooks and Liars' low standards for accuracy when it claimed:
When I worked for CNN Interactive, RedStaters were paid to troll our political discussions and disrupt them, especially during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. Back then, CNN locked them off the site. Now they pay them to troll in real time, on the air.
RS, of course, wasn't founded until 2004, and Erick's still the only paid blogger on the site; the idea that we could pay people to comment on the CNN website is ludicrous on its face. (The post now claims that "Freepers" were paid to do this, but as far as I know, FreeRepublic has never had that kind of cash either).
-More examples from lower-level left-wing blogs here ("What in the hell is CNN thinking? And John King? Is he harboring a grudge against Glenn Greenwald and to get back at him has employed someone who would be more at home in the hate talk ghetto?"), here, here (for a reaction of " shocked discuss"), and here.
Conservatives, of course, have our own grievances with media bias, but one longstanding difference is that we generally don't argue against major outlets employing liberal commentators who are labeled as such; the problem more typically is a 1-2 punch of not pairing them with good, or any, representatives from the Right, while passing off liberals and former Democratic staffers as objective journalists. It might be a good thing for the networks and major newspapers to put more bloggers, from both sides, on the air and in print, and let the consumer decide. But to the Left, that means only bloggers from their side need apply, and you risk an organized campaign against your sponsors if you try to give a conservative blogger a job. This is a mindset that goes all the way up to the President of the United States, who despite receiving mostly worshipfully deferential press coverage during his run for the presidency was and is obsessed with Fox News.
Ironically, while most of the ire directed at Erick has been fueled by a handful of his more bomb-throwing posts (I don't dispute that he's provocative, and has even used the "f" word on very rare occasions his tweets, albeit never on RedState, which has an anti-profanity site policy we all support), many of the people doing the complaining produce vast volumes of far more offensive and foul-mouthed stuff; they just rely on the fact that nobody on the Right has paid staff with the time to comb through it all. Meanwhile, besides being a hugely influential activist, Erick's been campaigning actively both against corruption in the GOP establishment and things like birtherism at the grassroots, and has taken his share of flak for those stands. As a city councilman, he's also an elected official dealing with the problems of government at the ground level. But then, none of this is really about Erick at all; it's a replay of the attacks on Ben and will be repeated again whenever a conservative (an actual one, not a neutered yes-man like David Brooks) gets televised or published outside of explicitly conservative media. And especially when it's a conservative blogger. They're not interested in debate. They're only interested in destroying us.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 12:33 PM | Politics 2010 | Comments (27) | TrackBack (0)
POLITICS: Legislative Make-Believe
Andrew Hyman walks through why the "Slaughter Solution" - i.e., pretend to have passed the Senate healthcare bill through the House without actually voting on the language of the same bill that passes the Senate, in flagrant violation of the Presentment Clause of Article I of the Constitution - is not at all like other "deem and pass" procedures used in the past. Of course, it's debatable whether some of the prior maneuvers are entirely kosher under Article I either, but one thing about the "Gephardt rule" discussed by Hyman (the name of which should identify which party cooked it up in the first place) is that at least it doesn't involve the House changing its own rules mid-stream after different bills have passed the House and Senate; when the vote is taken under that rule, everyone already knows what the procedure will be and must calculate and justify their political position accordingly. (Worse yet, the reconciliation procedure the Democrats are proposing presupposes that if parts of the deemed-passed bill are stripped out by the Senate, there will be no opportunity for the House to see the bill again, meaning that House members are being asked to buy a pig in a poke).
Besides it being terrible politics to use such obvious gimmickry, "deem and pass" seems politically pointless - nobody's going to buy that their Congressman who voted for the rule didn't effectively vote for the bill - and legally dangerous, since the Supreme Court has twice in the past quarter century (INS v. Chadha and Clinton v. City of New York) affirmed that it will strike down violations of the Presentment Clause, when the resulting enactment is challenged by citizens, states or municipalities adversely affected by its terms. The Court doesn't like to get involved in the internal affairs of Congress, but if there's one thing in Article I that's so basic that any viewer of Schoolhouse Rock will remember it and the Court will enforce it, it's that the same bill has to pass both houses before it becomes a law. I cannot possibly imagine a worse outcome for the Democrats than moving heaven and earth to pass Obamacare, and incur the political price for doing so, only to have it struck down by the Supreme Court - perhaps after they have lost their commanding majorities in Congress - on the grounds that they essentially cheated by changing the rules in the middle of the game to pass something that wouldn't pass under the traditional rules.
POLITICS: The Right To Surf
Meet John Smith. John is a surfer by trade. He dreams of competitive surfing; his walls are decorated with posters of famous surfers. But he has just one problem: here in his home town of Dubuque, Iowa, he can only surf small streams and brooks. "Sometimes, I just stand there on my board, waiting and waiting for some kid to throw a rock so I can have a ripple to surf on," says Smith, a vacant, far-away look coming into his grey eyes. "I bring a book with me to kill time. It's sad and frustrating. We don't have access to high-speed, high-volume waves here in Dubuque. My kids ask me when we're going to get them. I tell them, I just don't know."
But help is on the way: the Obama Administration promises to use billions of dollars in stimulus funds to build professional-quality wave machines in every zip code by 2014, to help connect surfers like John Smith to the world wide wave culture.
Seriously, this CNN sob story about lack of high-speed internet access in some markets is not much better. We'd all like to see more high-speed broadband, but since when is it a right guaranteed by the federal government? And is Uncle Sam really not spending enough money already on things we might want but don't need?
BASEBALL: Wrong Place, Wrong Time
Lee at Gettysburg, Napoleon at Waterloo; historians will forever debate whether they erred at critical junctures by misunderstanding or misjudging the lay of the land. In a similar vein, Morgan Ensberg says on his blog that he was mis-positioned by Phil Garner at a key moment in the 2005 NLCS due to an optical illusion from Garner's vantage point in the Minute Maid dugout.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 5:44 PM | Baseball 2010 | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
POLITICS: UnlikelyVoter.com
Good friend and RedState colleague Neil Stevens has launched Unlikely Voter, a new poll-analysis site. Go check it ouand get in on the ground floor of what is sure to be a busy site this election season. The initial explanatory post looks at the Specter/Sestak Senate primary race in Pennsylvania.
Neil is RS' resident tech/math guy, and aims to provide some mathematical rigor to the space already inhabited by RealClearPolitics' multi-poll averaging and Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com; while both of those sites are useful, RCP is an apples-and-oranges snapshot rather than an analysis site, and Silver's site, while superficially impressive, is too often driven by advocacy and in some cases apparent vendettas against particular polling firms, and tends at times to overstate the degree of certainty in its models, which tend to assume that all trends will continue indefinitely (like when Silver constructed a polling model predicting approval of same-sex marriage in 2009 by the following states: Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Nevada, Washington, Alaska, New York, Oregon) or tend to predict things like legislative votes that can't reliably be predicted with mathematical models.
We really have never had a satisfactory replacement in this space for Gerry Daly's site, and hopefully Neil will fill that gap.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 2:27 PM | Politics 2010 | Poll Analysis | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: VORP Speed Ahead, Mr. PECOTA!
Joshua Fisher, in the course of a useful primer on sabermetric stats, makes a point I've come back to again and again:
Our arrogance comes from the strength of our position; we're right about baseball and we know it. The problem is that things have become almost cultish; our alphabet-soup language poses a formidable barrier to entering the club. And that's where these primers come in. If we can walk people through the silliness of pitcher wins and ERA, they'll greet FIP with open arms. That's the plan.
But I'm not sure it works as elegantly as we'd like. I believe we've reached a sort of saturation point with advanced stats. Most anyone who wants to know about WAR is already plugged in. And the primers, while enjoyable, accurate, and insightful, are still lessons. I don't know about the rest of you, but I got into sabermetrics because I enjoyed discovery. There's a fine line between learning and being taught, and the former is much more enjoyable than the latter.
What's more, at the end of the day, do we really care if the people we watch the game with know the differences between UZR and Dewan Plus/Minus? Does it matter if they can discuss the merits and flaws of SIERA? Do our friends need to carry run expectancy charts in their briefcases?
I say no. What's important about sabermetrics isn't the statistics, but the approach to the game.
This has long been one of my two major critiques of Baseball Prospectus, much as I respect and value what BP brings to the table (the other is the ceaseless hyping of prospects without adequate perspective about how often super-prospects stumble and face a learning curve even when on their way to great careers): too much advanced math too close to the surface, too many non-obvious acronyms (WXRL sounds like a radio station to me), too many boutique stats with non-obvious scales (quick: what's the typical WARP for an All-Star? An MVP?). That's all well and good if you are writing a trade journal for professional GMs, and sometimes that seems to be what BP aspires to, but it's impossible for even an educated BP reader to translate this stuff quickly and cleanly to neophytes. And it often leaves one with a false sense of certainty about inherently imprecise inquiries, while the opaque nature of the numbers renders their inner workings impervious to analysis by most outsiders, who simply have to take the workings of the formulae on faith. Personally, I never use any math on this site more complex than algebra; partly that's my own mathematical limitations, and I recognize that there are times when a regression analysis would come in very handy, but if you start with the assumption that your readers come to be entertained and enlightened rather than have all arguments settled for all time, it's sometimes worth trading some level of precision for more easily understood measurements. That's a lesson Bill James, not just the greatest original thinker among baseball analysts but also the greatest popularizer of the form, has never forgotten, and I try to adhere to his example.
BASEBALL: 2009 EWSL Wrapup By Team
Further to the process of looking back at 2009's Established Win Shares Levels reports in preparation for 2010, here's how the 2009 teams stacked up. The first column is the number of EWSL by team (recall that my preseason reports collect only 23 players, so I'm always going to be a little short); the second is the number of win shares earned by those 23 players in 2009 (whether on that team or not); the third is the difference between the two; fourth is team wins; fifth is the total number of WS for the team's players minus those earned by the 23 guys I identified before the season; the last column is total team WS minus EWSL.
2009 WS
WS-EWSL
Unsurprising that the Mets were the biggest underachievers. Also unsurprising that the A's were near the top, as happens nearly every year, in Win Shares earned by players not on the preseason depth chart, topped only by the Mariners.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 12:34 AM | Baseball 2010 | Baseball Studies | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: Say Goodbye, Part I
Part of the process of compiling my annual Established Win Shares Levels-driven preseason previews is looking back at the prior season. Let's start with a look at the mortality of baseball careers: a list of the players from the 2008 previews who didn't make it into anybody's previews in 2009, by how they did in 2009:
10 or more Win Shares: These guys seriously returned to the land of the living, in Hughes' case making his mark on his second try as a prospect.
Adam Kennedy, David Aardsma, Scott Podsednik, Tony Gwynn, Angel Pagan, Jonny Gomes, Jason Hammel, Phil Hughes, Jason Frasor
5-10 Win Shares: These guys re-established themselves as major leagers.
Carl Pavano, Clay Buchholz, Jason Nix, Robinson Tejeda, Mike Sweeney, Lance Cormier, Omar Vizquel, Danys Baez, Josh Anderson, Scoyy Eyre, Miguel Batista, Justin Miller, Gabe Kapler, Shawn Camp
1-4 Win Shares: Some of these guys are just scrubs who flit on and off the 23d roster slot; others returned briefly from injury; others were winding down Hall of Fame careers.
Tim Hudson, Freddy Garcia, Brian Stokes, Brett Tomko, Jack Hannahan, Brendan Donnelly, Jason Jennings, Josh Bard, Pedro Martinez, Claudio Vargas, Brian Anderson, Bartolo Colon, Matt Herges, Andy Marte, Jeremy Sowers, Josh Fogg, Rich Vanden Hurk, Chad Gaudin, Tyler Walker, Robb Quinlan, Matt Albers, Brayan Pena, Luis Ayala, Tim Redding, Billy Wagner, Kyle Kendrick, Tom Gorzelanny, Brian Shouse, Jeremy Accardo, Ryan Langerhans, Paul Bako, Juan Castro, Kip Wells, Dustin Moseley, Ramon Ramirez, John Smoltz, Josh Barfield, Matt Belisle, Randy Flores, Juan Rincon, Alejandro de Aza, Doug Brocail, Tony F. Pena, Tony Abreu, Kevin Cash, Kevin Cameron, Nomar Garciaparra, Edgar Gonzalez, Eliezer Alfonzo, Jamie Burke, Garrett Olson, Kevin Frandsen, Chad Bradford, Jason Isringhausen, Esteban German, Julian Tavaraz, Paul Byrd, Luis Hernandez, Eric Milton, Matt Murton.
0 Win Shares: Most of these guys barely played and are all but finished as big leaguers.
Rich Hill, Jimmy Gobble, Vinny Chulk, Dontrelle Willis, Taylor Tankersley, Aaron Boone, JR Towles, Joel Peralta, Jason Repko, David Riske, Marlon Anderson, Angel Berroa, Casey Fossum, Shelley Duncan, Ian Kennedy, Chris Denorfia, Jeff Salazar, Emil Brown, Shawn Hill, Chris Burke, Brian Barton, Joaquin Arias, Russ Adams, Brian Burres, Alex Cintron, Wil Ledezma, Jorge Sosa, Fernando Cabrera, Lenny DiNardo, Rodrigo Lopez, Sergio Mitre, Guillermo Quiroz, So Taguchi
Did Not Play: Aside from a few guys rehabbing major injuries, nearly all these guys' careers have now ended.
Antonio Alfonseca, Moises Alou, Tony Armas, Rick Bauer, Robby Hammock, Brad Hennessey, Paul McAnulty, Brian Broussard, Aaron Fultz, Norris Hopper, Jacque Jones, Daryle Ward, Juan Salas, Jake Westbrook, Jeff Francis, Dan Ortmeier, Scott Proctor, Jason Wood, Toby Hall, Clay Hensley, Ryan Shealy, Oscar Villereal, Chris Capuano, Callix Crabbe, Wes Littleton, Pat Neshek, Bobby Kielty, Jose Valentin, Kei Igawa, Pablo Ozuna, Franquelis Osoria, Brian Babcock, Noah Lowry, Ron Washington, Joaquin Benoit, Jason Botts, Adam Loewen, Shawn Marcum, Dustin McGowan, Matt Chico, Javier Valentin, Dmitri Young, Armando Benitez, Gary Bennett, Ryan Bowen, Ambiorix Burgos, Sean Casey, Juan Castillo, Gustavo Chacin, Shawn Chacon, Brady Clark, Humberto Cota, Jose Cruz Jr., Ray Durham, Damion Easley, Jim Edmonds, Brad Eldred, Morgan Ensberg, Johnny Estrada, Brian Fahey, Eric Gagne, Lee Gardner, Justin Germano, Jay Gibbons, Marcus Giles, Gary Glover, Chris Gomez, Luis Gonzalez, Mark Grudzielanek, Orlando Hernandez, Jason Hirsh, Tadahito Iguchi, Chuck James, Geoff Jenkins, Dan Johnson, Byun Hyung Kim, Mike Lamb, Jason Lane, Jon Lieber, Esteban Loaiza, Paul Lo Duca, Kameron Loe, Ruddy Lugo, Hector Luna, Rob Mackowiak, Tom Mastny, Macay McBride, Adam Melhuse, Kevin Mench, Trot Nixon, Josh Paul, Jay Payton, Wily Mo Pena, Odalis Perez, Andy Phillips, Mike Rabelo, Mike Redman, Al Reyes, Dave Roberts, Kenny Rogers, Kirk Saarloos, Rudy Seanez, Richie Sexson, Ben Sheets, Andy Sisco, Chris Snelling, Scott Speizio, Scott Stewart, Mark Sweeney, Frank Thomas, Scott Thorman, Mike Timlin, Steve Trachsel, Jason Tyner, Jose Vidro, Ryan Wagner, Brad Wilkerson, Vance Wilson, Matt Wise, Jake Woods.
Again: some of these last two lists are guys who will be back, but most won't, and while there are plenty of names there of guys who were real or potential stars at one point or another - 20-game winners, 100-RBI guys, World Series heroes, ERA champs, hot prospects - and few of them left on their own terms.
It's a tough business.
BLOG: Ramping Up
Regular readers have undoubtedly noticed that things have been quiet about here lately. Partly that's work and family time commitments, and partly I've been using Twitter more for links and one-liners, and doing more longer-form posts for the blog, but I'm also at the point of the year where I'm ramping up on the preseason baseball previews, which require a lot of development time. I've also got something else baseball-related in the works that took a lot of time and won't be out for a bit.
I'll be back to talk about good news for the Mets, if there ever is any.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 12:46 PM | Baseball 2010 | Blog 2006-14 | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
POLITICS: Taranto Sinks Paul Krugman's Battleship
Krugman couldn't have walked into this one any worse if he tried.
POLITICS: Stark Raving Chairman
So, with the ethically-challenged tax-evading Charles Rangel temporarily stepping down from running the House's tax-writing committee (Ways and Means; this as opposed to the tax-evading Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, who's in charge of enforcing the tax code, and the head of the Senate's tax-writing commitee, Max Baucus, who for variety's sake had a sex scandal involving a staffer/girlfriend he tried to get appointed US Attorney), the Democrats have turned to the next in line by seniority, 79-year-old San Francisco paleoliberal Fortney "Pete" Stark. What could possibly go wrong? Brian Faughnan collects some of the greatest hits of the craziest man in Congress here; I've looked previousy at Stark's lunacy here; Moe Lane asks whether Stark's memory problems are the result of lack of integrity, generalized confusion or something genuinely wrong with him here.
BASEBALL: One More Thing
Looking over the Biblical array of misfortunes plaguing the Mets last season (and I'm still kicking myself that that column didn't even get to the Tony Bernazard fiasco, which turned out to be a gift that keeps on giving), you'd be forgiven for thinking the Mets had covered pretty much everything that could possibly go wrong.
But no! We didn't have a performance-enhancing drug scandal! Which we have now, with Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes questioned in an FBI investigation of an HGH-dealing doctor (how HGH could help Reyes, in particular, is beyond me; HGH, which helps build mass but doesn't actually aid any sort of performance, is arguably useful to guys already using steroids to add muscle mass; while steroids can help sprinters too - think Ben Johnson - a player looking mainly to improve his fast-twitch lean muscles would have no need I can think of for HGH).
Anyway, yet another story I really would rather avoid. Can't anybody here just play this game?
POLITICS: Ezra Klein, Underpants Gnome
Should President Obama politicize the Federal Reserve? If so, what would he accomplish? Ezra Klein of the Washington Post seems to think he should, and that this would somehow magically create jobs - but you would look long and hard for an explanation of how this would work.
For those of you unfamiliar with his work, Klein is the Washington Post's resident left-wing blogger (as opposed to its resident left-wing activist, Greg Sargent, or its resident right-wing bloggers or activists...of which it employs none) and one of the prime examples of a paid, professional left-wing blogger who has never held a job besides blogger/pundit. Klein is well-read, wonkish and earnest to a fault - he's perhaps the last man in Washington who takes government financial projections at face value - but often comically insulated from how the world works, and why. I follow his Twitter feed in large part for the entertainment value of watching him attempt to navigate the most mundane daily tasks - he gives off the impression of a man who can't brush his teeth in the morning without a position paper telling him how. I suppose in some ways I was like that myself once, but then I went to law school, got married, got a job, kids, a house, a mortgage...the sort of things that force you to engage the world at a level other than theory.
Anyway, Klein posted yesterday on his enthusiasm for a piece by Neil Irwin, also in the WaPo, on the opening of a third vacancy at the Fed and what it could mean for monetary policy going forward. Klein writes:
When people talk about the need for Democrats and the administration to focus on jobs, nothing they could get through Congress could plausibly be half as important as maximizing their long-term impact on the composition of the Federal Reserve....
Kohn's resignation is the fifth possible opening on the Federal Reserve Board. Two other possible slots were filled: The first went to Daniel Tarrulo, a banking expert who advised the campaign and is now overseeing banking regulation at the Fed. The second was Ben Bernanke's renomination, and whatever you think of the merits of reappointing Bernanke, it certainly did not represent the administration's decision to try to leave their imprint on the Federal Reserve.
Every smart economic observer I know is baffled by the administration's failure to nominate anyone for the two slots that have been empty for months. Those are votes and arguments that the administration could have put at the Fed's table and has simply chosen not to...I'm not versed enough in this stuff to have any candidates in mind. But the critique of the administration's strategy on jobs that I find compelling is that they've not had any coordinated strategy when it comes to the Federal Reserve.
Klein further enthused on Twitter that his post was "something major the Obama administration actually could do about the jobs situation, but hasn't." Except, nowhere does he actually get around to explaining how the Obama Administration putting its "imprint" or "impact" or "arguments" on the Federal Reserve Board would change Fed policy, let alone create jobs where none exist today. It's Underpants Gnomes logic: Step one: appoint left-wingers to the Fed. Step two: ??? Step three: Profit!
To get even a vague idea of how Klein expects this to work, you have to dig into the 18th through 21st paragraphs of Irwin's story:
At the moment, Fed officials are unified behind a policy of ultra-low interest rates to support the economy. But as the economy improves, some officials, especially presidents of regional Fed banks, are likely to be more eager than Bernanke to raise interest rates and drain the money supply, even at the risk of slowing the recovery. There are early signs of those pressures emerging, including a decision by Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig to dissent at the last policymaking meeting, preferring not to promise to leave rates low for an "extended period."
New Obama appointees could push the center of gravity of the committee in the president's preferred direction. Fed watchers generally expect the president to favor appointees who would be in line with Bernanke's thinking or perhaps even more tilted toward worrying about unemployment as opposed to inflation.
Some liberal economists argue that the president should quickly appoint Fed governors who would be inclined to leave rates low for longer to try to get growth going again, even if it comes at the cost of mild inflation.
At the same time, an appointee who is viewed as too soft on inflation or too close to the administration could cause problems. If financial markets doubt the Fed's willingness to combat inflation, either because of appointees' economic views or because of a perception that they want to boost growth in the run-up to the presidential election, interest rates could rise. That would slow the economy.
You see here a glimmer of why Klein is hesitant to come right out and say what he thinks. First, we have the already unsavory suggestion that the Fed should be treated as just another bureaucracy to be captured by the Left through the appointment of ideologues to supposedly non-partisan "career" positions. Klein doesn't seem to know what a central bank is. The Fed can act rapidly and in incredible size during a crisis, and without checks and balances (aka, Republicans). At a time when the Left feels hemmed in by the traditional political process at every step, the Fed looks like the one institution that can be the archetypical "man of action." The Fed needs that independence - it's core to the mission of an inflation-fighting central bank - but it's also the reason Congress allowed the Fed to be formed only with great trepidation and after 100 years of bitter debate, why its long, staggered terms tend to resist partisan Fed-packing, and why it's emergency powers should be narrowly circumscribed and not extended into an ongoing, wholesale economic-emergency state that supplants political decisionmaking by the elected branches rather than a traditional central bank focused laser-like on a stable currency.
On the merits, Klein's invocation of Irwin's piece is even more menacing. The unnamed "liberal economists" mentioned here are essentially arguing for an inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, rather than focusing on keeping the currency stable, which is supposed to be what central bankers' job is. While economic observers are divided on the importance of various contributing factors to the recent financial crisis, many smart observers argue that the Fed made the problem worse by keeping interest rates artificially low for too long, thus artificially reducing the cost of borrowing to invest in real estate, thus artificially inflating the asset bubble in real estate (at a minimum, the Fed did nothing to prevent the dynamics of an asset bubble from playing out the way asset bubbles do). The policy that Irwin describes with some skepticism, but which Klein apparently views as a godsend, runs the risk of repeating the exact same mistake and reinflating the same bubble. There are signs that we already have that problem; whether that worries you or not, we shouldn't be advocating putting people on the Fed with an ideological agenda of exacerbating that process.
That's the optimistic scenario. As Irwin notes, the pessimistic scenario is based on the fact that banks that lend at low rates get blindsided when inflation devalues their returns on those loans - thus, while easy money can cause inflation, fears of easy money causing inflation can simultaneously drive up interest rates and stifle job growth. That's called stagflation - inflation plus high interest rates and high unemployment - and while Ezra Klein isn't old enough to remember it from the Jimmy Carter era, in which interest rates cracked 20%, those of us who are do not want a Fed that thinks it's an acceptable risk to run. (Indeed, it was the Fed under Paul Volcker that played a crucial role, along with the Reagan Administration, in breaking the back of stagflation and setting the stage for the booms of the 1980s and 1990s, even at the short-term cost of making the recession even worse).
Some degree of politics in Fed appointments is inevitable, and moreso given the vast powers the Fed has accrued in recent years. But Obama's reappointment of Ben Bernanke, the Fed chair appointed by George W. Bush, and his grudgingly bipartisan confirmation by the Senate, is a reminder that even in the hyper-partisan Obama Era, there are some parts of the government in which nearly everyone recognizes that it's still dangerous to put ideology and partisan self-interest above predictability and stability. Klein's suggestion that Obama tilt the Fed towards the abyss of asset bubbles or stagflation is a reminder that a lack of common sense and experience can be a dangerous thing.
Posted by Baseball Crank at 12:15 PM | Politics 2010 | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
BASEBALL: The Age of Innocence
As usual, Joe Posnanski is mostly spot-on.
I do think steroids are worse than amphetamines in baseball, although it's a matter of degree. First of all, I'm no doctor but my guess is that using steroids year-round is worse for you than using amphetamines on game days. Relatedly, why we at least feel instinctively that steroids are a bigger deal is that they actually change the structure of your body, or help doing so, as opposed to just being a more extreme version of legal stimulants like caffeine.
But I agree completely with the broader point: there never was an age of innocence in baseball. At most, there was an age of maturity - the generation who played in the late 40s and early 50s, the age of guys 5-10 years older than Willie Mays, seem to have been a more serious and mature generation of players, not by nature but by experience, so many of them having experienced World War II. Among other things, the breaking of the color line would probably have been harder if so many of the players of that era hadn't had that experience. But it was hard nonetheless. And that generation still had its share of all the sins of baseball and society from the 1870s to the present day, just leavened a bit with hard experience.
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Trend Forecasting & Brand Identity
Cecile Poignant » Gun for peace
Gun for peace
We do speak a lot of guns and gun control, sadly there are always tragic disasters that remind us how fragile a human life is and how violent guns can be. Some signals make me think that we are trying to do something against that human drama.
Gun control a never-ending fight
In a show of support for gun control, Yoko Ono recently tweeted a photo of the bloodied glasses John Lennon wore the day he was murdered with this message : “Over 1,057,000 people have been killed by guns in the USA since John Lennon was shot and killed on 8 Dec 1980″ . Ono is an activist for many causes, she turned her attention to gun violence with a series of tweets that all included this image, which was also used on the cover of “Season of Glass” in 1981. She is really speaking loudly to her 4 millions followers on Twitter and giving power to the fight for gun control.
USA is ranked for the highest gun ownership rate in the world. To reduce the number of weapons on the street in cities, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, San Francisco have a gun buyback program . Last december, a one-day gun buyback event in Los Angeles gathered 2,037 firearms, including 75 assault weapons and a rocket launcher! The total was nearly 400 more weapons than were collected in a similar buyback earlier this year. People bring their firearms and each participant received $200 cash for each gun turned in.
Instead of following the ‘gun buyback’ model that has been implemented in the United States and Australia as a way of getting weapons off the street, Uruguay’s “Armas para la Vida / Weapons for Life” program is taking a different approach. Instead of getting cash, residents turning in their unregistered weapons will each receive either a new bicycle or a low-end computer.
Those initiatives are great, is it possible to do more? Some people thought the answer is yes.
Up-cycling as a solution
Jessica Mindich is a former lawyer, about a year ago, she was at a conference and ran into the Mayor of Newark. They spoke about Newark’s no-questions-asked gun buyback program, which was founded in 2009. The program needed money, and the Mayor didn’t know what to do with the weapons the city had amassed. “I know what to do with your guns,” Mindich said. Turn them into jewelry. She has transformed recycled pistols, rifles and shotguns into a line of sleek bangle bracelets, some dotted with tiny diamonds: “The Caliber Collection” .The word Newark is inscribed on the inside. Each bracelet has a serial number that corresponds with one of the actual guns taken off the city’s streets. Since the end of November, she has received over 1,000 orders from places as far as Brazil, Malta and New Zealand. Twenty percent of the proceeds will go directly to the gun buyback program in Newark, she said.
Will you wear a “Caliber Collection” bracelet? The message is very direct and make a permanent reminder of the gun crime your jewel was associated with…. Is it disturbing or just a really strong message?
“The Caliber Collection”
This is not the only signal : New York based social entrepreneur Peter Thun set up Fonderie 47 in 2009 with the humanitarian ambition of reducing the number of assault rifles and arms around the world. LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman is the investor of this company. Fonderie 47 purchased confiscated AK47s from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and transform them in jewelries. This year, the luxury brand teamed up with French-born jewellery designer James de Givenchy, nephew of fashion designer Givenchy, to produce a collection of ten limited edition pieces. They are crafted from AK47 steel, sustainably sourced 18-carat gold and conflict-free diamonds.The sale of each Fonderie 47 piece funds the destruction of a specific number of assault rifles in Africa through NGO partnerships. More than 25,000 assault rifles in Africa has been destroyed yet. This is a real new statement for a Luxury Brand and an optimistic sign for the future.
By James de Givenchy for Fonderie 47
Are bullets still sexy ?
There are still products for customers in love with bling, the Bernardo & Co ammo-shaped cufflinks are certainly the next eye-catching product in this segment. A very exclusive and covetable item with just the simple idea that men love weapons …
By Bernado & Co
Artya a very famous Swiss Watch maker have a line of products called “The Son of a Gun” .
For some guys there is nothing more masculine than an art watch with bullets… Artya’s clients range from musicians to rich people who enjoy this kind of product by finding it slightly subversive. The old myth which combines strength and weapons to virility is still powerful and attractive for some people.
By Artya “The Son of a Gun”
The positive signs are there but still quiet fragile.The future depend on the pressure we will, as citizens, put on our politicians to ask them to change the way we look at weapons.
Back from Milan
← Is bed the new desk?
Back from Milan →
A Poetic Fashion Brand From a Remote Island
The Monotony Of The White Cube
The future of fashion & mobility // POWER
“Storm Warner” an interview on travel …
The future of fashion & mobility // FREEDOM
The return of crafts
Colours!
BLACK ….
Frostie Dancing !
This essay by Junichiro Tanizaki was first published in 1933. It evokes the delights of darkness and the Japanese intimate taste for shadow.Tanizaki selects for praise all things delicate and nuanced. Objects that are refined by shadows and by the patina of age.An attitude of mindfulness.
Although Daniel Tammet is only 33, as an autistic savant with Asperger's syndrome, he has already lived an unusual life. "Born on a blue day" is his story. A rare and fascinating window inside the mind of a unique human being living with synesthesia.
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PLIC/1/0453 Mathew Murphy, 2 Francis Street, Drogheda, Louth. Murphy Francis Street; Drogheda Claim for £12 3s 6d for non delivery owing to delay or loss in transit of one box. Deemed consequential loss. Nil payment recommended by Committee.
PLIC/1/0637 Patrick J Smith, Mornington, Drogheda, County Louth. Smith Mornington; Drogheda; Louth Claim for £29 18s 6d for boxes of goods damaged in transit. Deemed consequential loss. Nil payment recommended by Committee.
PLIC/1/0759 William Hopkins Jordan, Roseville, Drogheda, County Louth, representing FW Brittain Limited. Hopkins Jordan FW Brittain Limited; JJ Keating, cycle and motor dealer Drogheda; Louth; Abbey Street Claim for £55 for delivery van at JJ Keating, cycle and motor dealer, Abbey Street, Dublin. Payment of £50 recommended by Committee.
PLIC/1/0832 Mary Finglas, 60 Francis Street, Drogheda, County Louth. Finglas Amiens Street Railway Station [Connolly Station] Francis Street; Drogheda; Amiens Street Claim for £10 1s 6d for loss of 1 box of salmon destroyed or lost at Amiens Street Railway Station [Connolly Station], Dublin. Payment of £10 1s 6d recommended by Committee.
PLIC/1/1549 George Henry Pentland, Blackhall, Drogheda, County Louth. Pentland Blackhall; Drogheda; Louth; Henry Street Claim for damage to building at 16 Henry Street, Dublin by fire and Crown forces. See PLIC/1/538.
PLIC/1/2704 George Henry Pentland, Blackhall, Drogheda, County Louth. Pentland Harrison and Company, cooks and confectioners Blackhall; Drogheda; Louth; Henry Street Claim for £2,200 for damage to premises and loss of security for rent at 17 Henry Street, Dublin. This particular claim was also made by Harrison and Company, cooks and confectioners. See PLIC/1/4583.
PLIC/1/2705 George Henry Pentland, Blackhall, Drogheda, County Louth. Pentland Blackhall; Drogheda; Louth; Henry Street Claim for £2,174 for damage to premises and loss of security for rent at 18 Henry Street, Dublin. See PLIC/1/2290.
PLIC/1/2706 George Henry Pentland, Blackhall, Drogheda, County Louth. Pentland Blackhall; Drogheda; Louth; Henry Street Claim for £4,300 for damage to premises and loss of security for rent at 19-20 Henry Street, Dublin. See PLIC/1/2290.
PLIC/1/2708 George Henry Pentland, Blackhall, Drogheda, County Louth. Pentland Blackhall; Drogheda; Louth; Henry Street Claim for £2,033 for damage to premises and loss of security for rent at 26 Henry Street, Dublin. No details regarding action taken.
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