D. Hocking

Thanks. I will never get tired of seeing the high school picture of Glen and Joe.

I remember one of our dogs reached the teenage period at the beginning of a winter with a lot of snow. My brother was skilled with manipulating the dog into the high snow banks when she got off track. By the time the snow melted she heeled nicely. You just need to move to Grand Marias or Fairbanks.

People have died and an entire town was destroyed, and when he finally responds this is it. Also, he is in France to supposedly honor the 100 year anniversary of the WWI armistice. He canceled going to the cemetery due to bad weather (there is a little bit of a drizzle). He always claims he is so pro-military, but he does things like this, and his tweet today wishing the Marine Corp a Happy Birthday is largely just a picture of him with some Marines at the very bottom of the picture looking up at him. Not to mention how he used the armed services as a political tool in his pre-election caravan fear-mongering.

That moment of them running out to first base for his last game was pretty neat (if one uses Mauer speak). They will always be able to look back and see how they were an important part of his big day. Whoever planned all of the unofficial Joe Mauer activities for his last game deserves a bonus.

I was browsing some of the comments, one thing I noticed from former teammates, people how have covered him, and some of his opponents, is that first they would say he was a great player and then follow-up with he was just as good of a person. I noticed the same thing when he played his last game. The comments all seemed genuine, not the obligatory canned response. https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/twitter-reaction-major-leaguers-honour-retiring-twins-veteran/

Yes -- his statement in the trib pretty much confirms the 2018 concussion is what pushed him to make the move. Besides ending with a World Series win, it is hard to think of anyway to top his last game of 2018. It was nice to see him seem to really enjoy himself and take everything in the last couple of weeks and esp. that last game.

I have actually seen that argument, by someone claiming to be a video expert. I am not sure why I ever check out twitter. I see Trump is also working hard to discredit any possible changes in AZ, FL, and GA crying voter fraud.

Objectively, I think this is the right decision for him and the team, but it does make me a little sad.

So the speculation that Sessions would be done sometime after the midterms did not take long to become fact. (I suppose further discussion of this would be for another thread).

I am curious to see if the hoard of invaders in the caravan will suddenly stop being a big talking point of the GOP similar to how the Ebola threat kind of disappeared once that election cycle was over.

It looks like Walker is going to lose, but could see a recount happening. FL and GA was disappointing. I feel like those elections rewarded racist robocallls, fear-mongering and a Secretary of State truly abusing his position to help him steal an election. At least the Democrats did take the House and it sounds like a lot state races went well. I wanted better results, but there were some positives of the night. Trump is already threatening the Democratic House not to do investigations. I think he is going to think he did well enough to become even further emboldened.

My polling place is never particularly busy, but this morning might have been the most people I have seen there, and I have been in the neighborhood for three presidential elections. I don't suppose it is too much to hope you were in Steve King's district and could vote against him. He might be in the top 5 of people I want to go down.

I am fairly confident I could have scored a touchdown against the Gopher defense yesterday.

So much to be proud of.... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-6345927/Nigerian-army-posts-Trump-video-justify-shooting-Shiites.html

This does not seem like a good use of our military resources, not to mention how much this unnecessary little campaign stunt is going to add to the already ballooning deficit. Plus I am thinking it is not going to add to our moral standing globally. Not that Trump cares, because he is positioning the country to be more aligned with the dictatorships or soon-to-be dictatorships in Brazil, Poland, NK, Russia, Saudi Arabia etc. than our traditional democratic allies. On an unrelated note, Kanye aka as Ye is breaking from Trump and now feels used.

The press still does a pretty good job of just passing on what he says and not do the fact check at the same time. By the time they call out a lie, the damage is done, and many people only see the straightforward repeat of the Trump lie, and miss the fact check done later. They still treat him like he is a normal person and somehow who is somewhat tethered to the truth. https://thinkprogress.org/associated-press-bloomberg-trump-birthright-citizenship-6f058d320c55/

He just tweeted the media is the "true enemy of the people" and again is blaming them for everything. I don't think he has said one thing about the victims since it happened, but did have time to tweet his baseball criticisms pointing out that someone complimented him and start his rally with a joke about his hair looking bad because he had to take questions in the rain talking to reporters (about the shooting) just hours after the shooting. During that time he also called Tom Steyer wacky, ignoring the fact that he also was a pipe bomb target. He cannot even fake having empathy or caring or being human anymore for more than one teleprompter speech.

I do think it was largely PR, but he also seemed genuine in his respect for Mauer. It seemed like he put some thought into it rather than just spewing some generic cliche, and the story about the bullpen catcher was a nice personal touch. It was also nice to hear him say how respected Mauer was in the league. I did notice he was a bit general in saying there would be place in the Twins organization and not saying as his first baseman, but I suppose the discussion of whether Mauer should or will return should be (and has been) covered in (an)other thread(s).

Here is a close up of the van -- someone on twitter posted it is what Steve Bannon would look like if he was a Transfomer.

I am completely speculating here, but when he spoke about it, he genuinely seemed to think it was a strong issue rather than him just giving the answer he felt he should give (he is a good speaker). I am guessing it is a goal of his. Also, he might not be fluent, but he did seem to have some understanding of the language greater than cerveza por favor.

I am glad with all that is going on that he has time to focus on what is important. I wonder if someone will point out to him that Twitter was probably removing bot accounts. Nice that after his initial statement, his only comments on the bomb threats have been to criticize the media. I think I have said this before, but if a psych student used him as a case study for narcissism (and a few other disorders), their professor or adviser would threaten to kick them out of the program for making things up. Editing to add he just tweeted this gem of true leadership:

Unfortunately, it was a weakness. He said he could not speak it well, but thought it was an important question. I would have preferred had he been fluent in Spanish, but from it was an answer it was apparent he had thought about it and thought it was an important issue and would be a factor when hiring his staff. I might be putting words in his mouth, but he seemed to be aware not all players were alike, that some players might connect well with his style, but would be good to have a coaching staff that could connect to the some of the players in a way he could not (some of that was Spanish related, but I think he also meant it more generally). I had it on in the background while was working, so I might not have gotten everything correctly.

Esp. if the other phrase you learned was "beer please".

I listened to his press conference. Not an informed or educated opinion, but I liked what I heard. He seemed to know his strengths and weaknesses and really seemed to know he needed to hire staff that complimented those strengths and weaknesses and seemed to be able to think on his feet and was well-spoken in his answers. He acknowledged the ability of speaking Spanish being one of these areas. Not that this necessarily means anything on how one will be as a manager, but he also seemed very personable.

I have not had a chance to binge and have only gotten through episode 3. They have done a good job of showing of spending time in a possibly haunted house as a child can leave a few scars. They did a really good job with casting the kids matching their adult counterparts, and all of them being able to act.