Stick to baseball, 10/7/17.

My lone Insider piece this week looked at the top under-25 players on playoff rosters, so of course someone complained that I’d left Manny Machado off the list. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

Next Saturday, October 14th, I’ll be at Changing Hands in Phoenix, talking about and signing copies of Smart Baseball, starting at 2 pm ET. This Changing Hands location serves beer and wine, which may help make me more interesting.

And now, the links…

Comments

  1. Because I worked at Olive Garden many years ago, I always feel a need to defend the place. I mean, after all, it’s a chain restaurant. You’re not supposed to have, nor should you expect, a five-star meal at a chain place. Chain places exist because of the familiarity and comfort they provide.

    That being said, I maybe go to Olive Garden once a year anymore. I do get upset when I see dishes I liked no longer on the menu. It does feel like they’ve spent too much time tinkering the last few years.

  2. A New Gun Law

    The new federal law will incorporate all of the following:

    No firearms or ammunition can be purchased online.

    No firearms or ammunition can be purchased at a gun show.

    Only single-action firearms are legal.

    A person can own only one rifle and one pistol.

    All firearms legally sold must be of the “signature” type. This includes law enforcement and military firearms.

    The sale of any firearm and any ammunition will be taxed at the federal level at a 500% rate. The tax revenue generated will be used to pay down the federal debt.

    The DOJ will, as its #1 priority, will seek out individuals or groups owning more than one rifle and one pistol.

    Any person purchasing a firearm must pass a background check.

    No convicted felons can own a firearm.

    No one deemed mentally unstable can own a firearm.

    A person must be 21 years of age to purchase a firearm or ammunition.

    No one currently pending a felony court hearing can purchase a firearm.

    Any person owning a firearm must be licensed by the federal government. This is no longer a “state’s rights” issue.

    This proposal will reduce the gun related horrors. God gave us a brain to solve problems—not merely to help victims. Do we want future generations to wonder why we didn’t do something meaningful? It’s past time. Please support this proposal in its entirety.

    What of the NRA? Its members? The politicians with their hands soaked in the blood of NRA bribes? They know where they can go.

    • I’m not sure this would survive a 2A court challenge, but even if we ignore that, it has a 0% chance of passing even one house of Congress.

    • Phil, yes, do all you can to encourage Democrats to run on this, but please wait till after 2020 when Trump is, hopefully, out of office. I think there is maybe nothing more likely to ensure Trump winning reelection that what you just proposed.
      Besides being completely unconstitutional, it would never pass Congress and would likely lead to a new civil war.

    • A Salty Scientist

      This would never survive a Supreme Court challenge, and many Dems in purple states would vote no. Even proposing this on their national platform would cost Dems seats, possibly an ACA-like wave of them. This would be political suicide.

  3. A Salty Scientist

    I tend to agree with full transparency in food labels, but simply stating that something is GMO is meaningless without telling people how the organism was actually modified (and in this case, Okanagan will have a link that details how the apples were modified). Of course anti-GMO loons don’t care what the modification is, even when there is zero biological rationale for suggesting that the modification is unsafe.

  4. I read the Olive Garden article a few days ago, and while I am interested in the basic subject, I absolutely hated the article. I found the piece to be so pretentious that I kept skipping the faux-poetry paragraphs until I finally gave up entirely.

  5. wickethewok

    “There is only one Olive Garden, but it has a thousand doors.” is a fantastic line.

  6. The story linked to regarding PR and food stamps says that the administration did grant a waiver allowing Puerto Ricans to purchase hot food with food stamps, as of a letter the USDA sent Sep 30th.

  7. When I read the LA Times article about the con man who pretended to be a doctor, I felt a sense of dread that Debra Newell or one of her family members would not survive the story. Prosecutor Matt Murphy was quoted as saying that, “Ninety-nine times out of 100, the nice person is the one that is dead.” Fortunately Ms. Newell and her family beat those odds, but kudos to the author for setting up the story so well and sustaining suspense throughout.

    I noticed that the author, Christopher Goffard, is the same person who wrote an excellent multi-part story last year about a PTA mom in Orange County who was framed for drug possession by a vengeful rival. Well worth a read if you haven’t already done so.

    http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-framed/

    • The PTA mom piece is even better, to me, because the story is so unfamiliar. This one is, unfortunately, something we’ve heard a million times, just extremely well-told.