Full house today with plumbers, insulation, kitchen flooring fix (under the frig dry rot) so Gus and I are hold up in the office.
The BIG news are the Brewers.
First they trade Brinson (and others) for Christian Yelich which is great. Unproven talent is . . unproven and in return you get a young amazing outfielder 2 years away from his prime age. Yelich is a very very good Center fielder but better Left fielder and covers more ground catching fly balls then 90% of all other outfielders. Fantastic glove and bonus arm. Oddly Braun had his best fielding in his career last year in LF.
Yelich has good power and will REALLY be helped in Milwaukee. Miami is one of the hardest parks to hit a HR in and he is going to Milwaukee one of the easiest so I'm hoping for 25+ HRs with a good batting average. Yelich is on my Strat-o-matic team and I love the guy. a 600AB every day player.
So before I noticed the Brewers signed Lorenzo Cain I thought our new CF was Yelich (where I play him).
BUT NOOOOO - "we" sign Lorenzo Cain from Kansas City another really really hard ball park to hit a HR in. Cain is a world class Center fielder. very very good arm, covers an amazing (like Gomez used to) amount of ground in CF. Hitting is just OK and might dip a little in Milwaukee. He can hit HRs but Miller Park is not as conducive to doubles and triples as Kansas City is. I'm not as excited on his offense but any lack in offense is made up for in fielding which in turn will really help pitching. Plus he is an every day 600AB player.
Not sure what happens to Broxton now but I'm not REAL pumped on his weak offense and not the greatest fielder. Plus Brox is in his prime being almost 27. 27 is the age most players hit their over all peak.
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The blame game for the latest government shutdown is being a little miss reported by the media because of how the question is begin asked. . . . but before I get into that I want to say I am NOT 100% against the REAL GOP.
The GOP before Trump - Shrink the deficit, defend states’ rights, and be tough on Russia. The GOP after Trump - Budget deficits are are meaningless, state’s rights are obsolete, and Russian aggression is no big deal. I feel the GOP has sold their soul to Trump and they will pay for it in the mid terms.
I have no issues with a difference of opinions when it comes from sane people.
With that said - the question being asked by pollsters is a little misleading. Who is to blame, Democrats, Republicans or Trump. 32% blame democrats, 18% blame Republicans and 31% blame Trump.
Among democrats 57% blame trump and 30% blame Republicans and 4% blame Democrats. Among Republicans 77% blame Democrats 5% blame Trump and 2% blame themselves.
The issue is Republicans are tied to Trump and you cannot separate them. A Presidents approval rating is highly correlated with how a party does in elections.
But the bottom line is who cares. Nobody is changing their opinions because of the shutdown.
There are some interesting tidbits in the latest polls. FOX News poll asking their viewers about the economy was the largest percentage of FOX people saying the economy is doing very very well since 1998 (17%).
Only 25% of Democrats are dissatisfied with current immigration laws - the lowest ever.
A record-high 58 percent of Americans told feel that government should do more to solve problems and help meet people’s needs while 38% say the government is doing too much to help people.
69% of Democrats are looking forward to the mid-term elections. 58% of Republicans are looking forward to them. This is a reverse from 2010 and 2014 where Republicans were 12 and 15 points more excited then Democrats.
37% of Americans make their bed. We make our bed so if we do absolutely nothing the rest of the day . . at least we did SOMETHING.
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In other news - the GOP is proposing ending funding for the International Space Station.
The GDP which the GOP promise's to be 6% to pay for the tax cuts came in much lower then expected at 2.6%. The target was 3%. Our economy is growing slower then expected. This stopped the longest streak above 3% in history (which started with Obama).
Actually it was a good report overall but Americans buy too many goods from other countries and the amount of goods being sold overseas has been dropping. Other countries do not want Made in America.
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Got a little very light rain going through today noonish. No worries.
have a great day - about to turn off power for a tad. Cheers