59 thoughts on “November 7, 2016: And so it begins (or ends)…”

  1. In that case, allow me to cast a non-cynical WGOM vote for some "good will towards men."

      1. Dadgumit! I tried to make my intentions clear without having to excessively qualify every word therein. Don't you go making me want to weep and/or take to drink more than current circumstances already do.

        I certainly considered Pepper and decided that she would appreciate the concise nature of the statement and would respect the use of the biblical and holiday allusion in it's common usage. I don't know. I could be wrong.

        1. Don't sweat it, sister.

          my actual opinion SelectShow

  2. As a restaurant guy, I was really dreading election season, as typically (in my experience) the presidential election negatively impacts restaurant sales the few months before the actual election. Well this time around we have been very busy. Either the insanity is driving people to drink more than normal, or people just want to get away from their TV's. First election ever where not a single guest has asked me to put a news channel on TV. Yes, election fatigue is heavy in the air.

    I took tomorrow off to make it easier to vote, and to grab some wine and watch the results roll in.

    1. I adore the idea of Election Day being a national holiday. I understand the problems with that idea, but I still think the good outweighs the bad.

      Unfortunately, I have some things scheduled tomorrow that will preclude myself from taking a full day off, but I'll probably knock off a couple hours early.

      1. I completely agree that the good outweighs the bad.

        My wife and I decided to vote early this morning after realizing how hectic our schedule is tomorrow (and understanding that we are very inefficient at getting two kids ready and out the door), but we are lucky to have the flexibility to take an extra 45 minutes out of our Monday morning to do that.

        1. We're taking off early tomorrow as well.

          I went so far as to look up where to vote early, but decided against it. I want to bring my kids to the polls; they're pretty young, but I need them to experience it.

          1. I remember going to the polls with my parents and appreciate that experience. Thankfully my older son's mom took him when she voted early last week so he got to see it.

            We took our 2-year old today, not to get too political here but he was adamant that we vote for stickers.

        1. Yep, Get there at 5, open polls at 6, close polls at 7pm, get home by about 8. Full day, but I enjoy the service, and the $200 check ain't bad either.

    3. I will vote after work, I believe the polls are open until 8? So I'll head over there around 6:30. Then I'll stare into the void watch the returns roll in all night.

    4. Regarding election fatigue.

      I am not someone who follows cable news, or watches any kind of television news at all. I don't listen to news on the radio, either. I'm not sure where that puts me on the map in the US. I tend to visit the New York Times and Seattle Times online for catching up on current events. But I feel like there are more places that I am not supposed to talk about politics than there are places that I am allowed to talk about politics. And that's no slight to this fine establishment, where I understand the desire to keep political/partisan arguments elsewhere, but it worries me that people are getting worn out on the election by getting talked at by the media and avoiding any kind of meaningful conversation with people that they know, where we could seek common ground.

      To illustrate my point, here is roughly a summary of a typical weekday for me:

      Wake up, go to the gym--can't talk politics there, don't want to disrupt the community
      Ride the bus to work--don't talk politics at work
      Spend most of the day at work--don't talk politics at work
      Spend time at sports websites online--don't mix politics and sports
      Ride the bus home from work--don't talk politics at work

      Then it's something like:
      Spend the evening with my wife and daughter, but we have very similar political viewpoints,
      Or spend the time with friends, but they have very similar political viewpoints,
      Or spend the time with our new parents group, can't talk politics there, wouldn't want to offend anyone

      Then I'll go somewhere like Facebook, which I would generally say is not the best place for productive discourse, but I'll often see the sentiment expressed that people are sick of politics on Facebook.

      At which point, it seems crazy to worry about the 1st Amendment, it seems like we've done a pretty good job restricting political speech through social norms.

      1. What I've noticed since I went cold turkey on politics (a decision which I feel was both right and which I won't discuss outside of a spoilered comment) is how many people seem to feel free to talk about it, assuming I'm on the same page as them. I've been a political outlier most of my life, so I've always been somewhat used to this. But it strikes me that this election has pushed the boundaries of those assumptions, even while I choose not to call them out.

        As for the First Amendment, while social conventions in some circles may have squeezed out conversations about politics, I'm still glad we have it. I've always felt it was most important to people doing controversial work in their professional or vocational lives, knowing that they were shielded from retribution based on their findings or products of their activities.

        Now, if only there was some way to get people in this state to shut up about football...

        1. I, too, find it interesting how many people are convinced that they know all my political opinions, given how rarely I express them and the limited number of people to whom I express them.

          1. People assume a lot of stuff about a lot of things, like height, looks, skin color, where you live, how you dress, the tenor of your voice. I've made assumptions about you because of your profession and I'm not proud of that.

            1. I've made assumptions about people here, too, including having a picture of what you all look like in my head even though I've never met any of you. I'm talking about people I interact with in person who really don't have any idea what my political opinions are, but assume that they do. I'm not bothered by it, particularly--I just find it interesting and sometimes amusing.

          2. It's logical, when one assumes himorherself a reasonable individual, to assume that another person, whom they know and with whom they associate and find to be reasonable, would naturally hold similarly reasonable opinions...particularly when we've reached the point at which other political opinions simply CANNOT be reasonably held !!!111!!...and so on.

            1. This sort of reminds me of House:

              Cuddy: "How is it that you always assume you're right?
              House: "I don't, I just find it hard to operate on the opposite assumption."

              But your post here kind of gets at what I am talking about. If we don't actually talk about political issues with people with whom you associate and find to be reasonable, then we wind up backing ourselves into a corner believing that other political opinions can't be reasonably held--obviously all those reasonable people that I don't talk about politics with must agree with me.

        2. My wife and I are on the same page, politically, but in our circle of friends at church, we all know whose political leanings differ from ours, and we don't use that to cause any rifts. Our neighbors, on the other hand, are on a different page than us, and in most political discussions, when they happen, we just smile and nod our heads. I'm not sure they even know where we stand, and we also are not letting that come between us even if they did. I can certainly appreciate different opinions, being a small business owner for instance and not a corporate lackey like I am, so hearing another viewpoint isn't a bad thing.

        3. What I've noticed ... is how many people seem to feel free to talk about [politics], assuming I'm on the same page as them.

          I've sort of noticed this even outside of politics. I was at Mount Rainier recently, near the visitor's center, and my FIL randomly ran into some HS friends that happened to be living in Florida. They made a lot of disparaging comments about how there are hills everywhere (yes, you did choose to visit a 14,411-foot mountain) and how it's nice and flat in Florida. And that they'd never seen traffic so bad as in Seattle and the traffic in Florida is so much better. Which I guess is a good arrangement for them--if you're going to live somewhere, you might as well like it--but there seemed to be literally zero thought put into how I might react to these comments. I just sort of nodded and mildly agreed that, say, it's harder to walk uphill than it is on flat ground, and that yes, there are a lot of people to share the roads with. Would they have wanted me to argue with them about how I think Seattle is wonderful? Did they just expect someone from Seattle to agree that, of course, Florida is a much nicer place? Maybe people have always been like this and I never noticed.

          And I'm not saying there's any problem with the First Amendment, I was just being overly clever about saying that we've basically used our right to free speech to decide not to speak very much. Which maybe is the right choice, but I am skeptical about that because it seems to imply that government is not important. And I look around the world and I think that how a country is governed by its leaders seems to matter a great deal.

          You may be on to something with a movement to quash football speech.

          1. "...we've basically used our right to free speech to decide not to speak very much. Which maybe is the right choice, but I am skeptical about that because it seems to imply that government is not important. And I look around the world and I think that how a country is governed by its leaders seems to matter a great deal."

            In the pantheon of deadpan, fully-baked observational statements uttered in the basement, this may top my short list.

          2. we've basically used our right to free speech to decide not to speak very much.

            Welp, this hasn't stopped me from putting my foot in my mouth more times than I can count. In fact, my mouth has written more bad checks than wells fargo. I should probably learn from that...

  3. The Rockies have hired Bud Black to be their new manager. Black's tenure with the Padres was marred by some ugly ownership issues and uneven front office approaches. His teams only finished above .500 twice, but over his his eight seasons Black was one win above his teams' cumulative Pythag. Black was originally offered the managerial gig in Washington, but the Nationals reportedly low-balled him (one year, $1.6 million, no more than two guaranteed years). My hope is that he's given plenty of latitude & support in Colorado, because he seems like a fairly good manager who twice got a bum shake.

    1. Thad has a great sense of humor coming out as well.

      That's good; he's probably going to need it.

    3. FWIW, the report I heard on Antony is that he's a hard worker that diagreed with many of Ryan and Smith's moves. And he still has a year on his contract so would have been paid this season either way.

      It probably makes sense to keep him in the assistant GM capacity unless he's totally negative.

      1. In the conference Derek had praise for Anthony and made it sound like there's a place for him (at least for now) -- it would make a lot of sense to have him as a bridge to the future.

        1. I knew that the Twins' didn't have nearly as many people dedicated to analytics as other organizations but I didn't realize till recently that the Twins' front office in general was tiny compared to most other orgs (less than half the staff of the World Champ Cubs), so the new regime will be focusing more on adding than subtracting. More likely a lot of reassigning and having people focus more on specializing.

          1. LaVelle's story on Sunday was the first time I realized this. It wasn't too shocking since every anonymous quote from another front office would talk about how far behind the Twins were in this area.

    4. I caught a good chunk of it over lunch. Agree on Thad's humor. Nice to see his "dig" at Sid (dig is too strong, but Sid's tone deserved some sort of response).

      I felt like most of everything else they said was really really boring though. Everything professional, nothing unexpected. As mentioned at the lunch caucus last Friday, that's probably a very very good thing ("Total System Failure" and "Molitor is still the manager no matter what" being the examples of things that need to be righted with "boring and expected" statements.).

      1. They fielded a lot of questions about "metrics" and were careful to state that it's only a part of the equation; I get the feeling that they are trying to allay the media's fear of a numbers-driven game and not just poo-pooing their questions.

        1. Gotta boil them frogs slowly.

          Did Great-Grandpa Sports talk about tying an onion to his belt or something?

          1. Ha!

            Sid asked about the plethora of young execs who've never played the game, and they were happy to point out all the success those new execs have had, and how their varied experience lends to the overall picture when creating a good team. I'm sure they were warned about Sid in advance and gave him (just enough) respect in their reply.

        2. I felt like they both believe very much in the balanced approach, and there was some depth there beyond holding the media's hand.

  5. We had our 20 week ultrasound today. The head circumference was dead-on 50th percentile. No issues to report from the ultrasound tech or OBGYN. Only thing was that the baby was comfy and wouldn't move so we could get a good pic of the heart. Heart rate was 138 bpm, but couldn't get much more than that.

    He/She sleeps just like his/her daddy - arms around the head, knees tucked in tight, and "I'm not moving, I'm comfy damnit! Come back later"

    1. Random ultrasound story: We were fine with knowing the sex of the baby, and they told us it was a boy. At our next ultrasound, Jane asked they could make sure it was a boy, you know, for future planning, names, and all that. After awhile, a smirking, giggling tech handed us a picture she somehow got from a view below and in between his legs, looking up. Yup, it was fairly conclusive.

      1. We said we didn't want to know the sex, but I'd be lying if I wasn't peaking in the area.

        1. Also, at one point the tech said "I know you weren't going to find out the sex, but in this position I'm not sure I could tell you if I wanted anyway"

      4. I feel like the ultrasound technology now is pretty amazing. I was going in expecting it to be really hard to tell what was going on, but it was pretty high resolution.

      5. "It's a boy...and WHAT a boy!"
        "Homer...that's the umbilical cord."

        We had a conclusive look at Skim as well. The Milkmaid kept saying "How are you and the doctor so sure?" and I finally said "You've never seen a female from that angle, but it's practically the only angle I've ever seen them from."

    1. I don't know why this particular player popped into my head, but I said to myself "If we sign Henry (*#$ing Blanco..."

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