I did not have spiritual relations with that church......Trinity United.Kate h/t :
"There goes that historic, transcendent, life-changing, not since the Gettysburg Address, "I have a dream," must-be-taught-in-every-school race speechYeah, that speech stood the test of time, didn't it?
Because the church did many good things in the community, and because the staff and members were beloved good friends to us: Michelle and I glazed over and ignored the misguided opinions of some persons in the church. We were wrong to have done that. We are humbled. We apologize, and we ask forgiveness.Such a statement would help with two of Barack's problems:
It's ironic Michelle and I have spoken out about the evils of racism. We may have felt - in some instances - as if we were teachers, and as if we were standing up for principle. However, we now see we are still students. We now see we did not stand up as often as we could have. We are humbled.
I agree with this article about runner reluctance: runners try to take extra bases far less often than they should. When a runner is thrown out, either the runner or the coach who sent him typically receive far more criticism than they deserve.
In youth league coaching, as I moved to new age groups, I intentionally spent the first couple of games testing out when the particular age group was likely and unlikely to throw out runners. At each level, I was shocked at how difficult it was to consistently throw out runners. I was sending runners, and was sorta kinda trying to get them thrown out (just so I could discover the limits of the age group I was coaching in), and my doomed runners were coming in safe time after time. This opened my eyes.
As a consequence: we ran and ran. Running bases was the best thing we did. By my second year of coaching the 11-12 age group, playing on 70 foot bases: we averaged 19 stolen bases and/or extra bases taken (aka aggressively risky bases taken against outfielders and basemen) per game.
Who cares about modesty: we were awesome! We took by far the largest leadoffs in the league. On leadoffs from first, our front feet were a minimum 13 feet off the base (we marked 13' during practice, and demanded it). We were out there probably 4-6 feet further than other teams' baserunners, and still I'm not sure we ever got picked off that season. I tried - purely out of curiosity about what would happen - to get our best baserunners to venture further off of first base. They were already so far out there, and it was already so easy for them to steal second: they just weren't interested in getting further off the base.
And yet: on the occasions we got a runner thrown out while stretching for an extra base, our team's fathers would gather on the cyclone fence and talk bad about me for sending the runner.
The fathers failed to realize the opportunity cost of not being aggressive would've been definite and noticeable. Our team spirit and verve would have lessened. We would've lost some edge. We intimidated opponents with our baserunning, and that would've been lost.
When a kid got thrown out, those fathers would say: "Why couldn't Greg SEE that kid would get thrown out? ANYONE could've seen it!"
What they said was true - insofar as anyone could've seen our runner would get thrown out with a perfect throw and a perfect tag. Our team fathers didn't take time to realize those conditions also existed during a significant proportion of our successful running attempts - it's just that the perfect throw and the perfect tag failed to materialize in those successful instances. Look at the baseman in the photo above: he's likely 13 or 14 years old, yet he's making a suboptimal tag attempt. 11 and 12 year olds usually do no better.*
If a coach is going to send a bunch of runners: he will benefit from understanding he is playing odds, and he will sometimes get burned. Good. It is proper to get burned once in a while. A base coach is not trying to be perfect. Instead: he is trying to play smart odds. This understanding will help a coach stand up under the scorn of the cyclone fence fathers. If a coach never gets anyone thrown out, he is costing his team runs via being too timid. If an 11-12 age group coach goes a couple of weeks without getting a runner thrown out: he needs to consciously coach more aggressively.
Players, at all levels, rarely understand the strategy of playing smart odds, and rarely stand up well to scorn. This is why players, especially, are reluctant to be as aggressive as they ought to be. To encourage aggressiveness, we did these things:
1. All runners had green light at all times. I did not give signals to runners. Get the players' brains thinking about when they can make it and when they cannot. They'll figure it out - and probably better than you would.
2. During every practice, we had players take one rep of leading off against a pitcher who might try to pick them off. We used kids as the pitchers and the basemen. Adults would've given the runners a false read vis a vis kid effectiveness. The runners would continue the exercise until the pitcher made a move towards the plate; then the runners would take their first four or five steps as if stealing the next base.
3. We used a formula (and zero coach input) to determine batting order. The more effective a players' OBP + baserunning (stealing, plus taking extra bases, minus a strong penalty for being thrown out)**: the higher that player got to hit in the batting order. This encouraged players to be focused both on batting success and on baserunning aggressiveness. If a player was not taking extra bases, his formula score and then his batting spot would go lower. I made the call as to when players were credited with aggressively taking extra bases.***
4. If all else fails - for instance: if your runner on second is too scared to try for third ... then: stand in the coaching box, blatantly point at third base, and demand - for God and the pitcher and the catcher and the opposite dugout and all parents to hear: "Steal this base. On the next pitch."
For your runner, this maximizes the pressure and wonderfully focuses the mind. It is the equivalent of Cortez burning his ships upon reaching the new world. It is the equivalent of Jimmy Johnson's "Put it in 3 inch headlines: WE WILL WIN." It eliminates all excuses. EVERYONE heard your demand. Your runner is mortified. Everyone knows! He must steal. He must make it. His adrenaline skyrockets. I love it.
The first time you do this, your own players will believe you are a psycho. I love that, also. You won't need to do this more than 2 or 3 times a season. The players will get the idea.
Players - and human beings in general - can always accomplish more than we believe we can. It's a coach's job to open players' eyes about what they can actually accomplish.
I recommend this overall system. Maybe you shouldn't publicly demand your players steal a base unless you share my particular (peculiar?) personality traits. However, I recommend the rest of it. The cost is the extra effort needed for record keeping. The reward is players who are more focused at bat, and more aggressive on the bases. It eliminates all but the most creative parent anger about batting order. If you hand out player stat sheets in the dugout just before a game: that concentrates players' focus more effectively than anything else you could say or do.
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*Teach your basemen:
1) tag at ground level (the glove literally brushing the dirt)
2) let your tag softly give with the runner's momentum.
Unless instructed, kids will
a) tag midair
b) try to fight the runner's momentum with the brute force of their fielder's glove.
**We also accounted for extra base hits in our formula. If I coach again, in order to simplify the record keeping: I will count a double as a hit + an extra base taken. A triple = a hit + 2 extra bases taken, etc.
***If your team is truly aggressive at baserunning, situations arise where the runner on second or third doesn't have time to look for the basecoach:
If it's a close decision, there is no time to look to the basecoach. Therefore, the runner needs to make all these decisions - whether close or not. It's part of playing the game; it's part of growing up. Runners should be rewarded for making aggressive and correct decisions. They should be punished for being either passive or over-aggressive.
My pleasant experience is that the runners do far better at decision making than I expected. But, it's my personality to be willing to live with some kid mistakes. You have to be, or doing this will drive you crazy.
If a kid makes a mistake:
1. Neither chastise nor allow disappointment or scorn to creep into your tone. It helps if you actually are not disappointed or scornful in your own mind. There's no reason to be. You knew this would happen when you decided to let kids make their own decisions.OLBERMANN: Scott McClellan [...] I think this a primary document of American history and I'm very impressed with it. At some point people will be teaching history based on it.With his next guest, John Dean, Olbermann wondered if there was still time to use McClellan's book as a basis for Congress to impeach President Bush. h/t
Why does he accept the false premise underlying that question?! And underlying that question? And underlying that question? WHY does he meekly agree with every false premise which is proffered?And the answer - which was already guessed by most who watched: Scott McClellan doesn't know any better. He doesn't understand conservative principles or logic.
There's nothing there[in the book]. The Bush Administration is crazy to respond as they have, because they make it look as if something is there. What is in this book which is a grave revelation about George Bush?The answer is: nothing. The book is not about inconvenient facts. The book is about McClellan's political opinions, interpretations, and even suppositions about what happened in meetings he did not attend. McClelland has said the book is "my truth". "My truth" equals "my opinion". "My truth" does not equal either "truth" or "facts".
Base coaches and runners should continue being careful during those situations.
Rangers rookie pitcher Doug Mathis is like that robot. He's a ways away from being a good major league pitcher. Five of the first eight batters reached against him - several via well struck line drives - yet he dodged fatal bullets. He loaded the bases in the second - with only one out - then danced around and escaped. The important thing is: Mathis was better in the third inning than he was in the second. He was better in the fifth inning than in the third. He's a learning robot. He completed six innings and miraculously gave up only one run.
Another unmistakable sign [that election-year discourse has gone surreal] is when a presidential candidate makes a gaffe, then, realizing it is too egregious to take back without suffering humiliation, decides to make it a centerpiece of his foreign policy.While I was away - in defending his improvised doctrine of counseling with Castro, et al - Barack launched a series of invalid, ahistorical comparisons with previous Presidential meetings.
Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."
After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.
Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats. Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year ... “Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?”In extricating the U.S. from the specter of Soviet missiles in Cuba, JFK agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. JFK demanded Khrushchev keep the agreement secret. Hollywood spent ensuing decades lionizing JFK for standing up to Khrushchev.
But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.” Khrushchev used the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to warn Kennedy that his country could not be intimidated and that it was “very unwise” for the United States to surround the Soviet Union with military bases.
Kennedy’s aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.”
[...]
Kennedy went on: “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”
A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.
I recommend [Obama] read Henry Kissinger's book, "The White House Years." Mr. Obama would learn it took 134 private meetings between U.S. and Chinese diplomats before a breakthrough at a Jan. 20, 1970 meeting in Warsaw. It took 18 months of behind-the-scenes discussions before Mr. Kissinger secretly visited Beijing. And it took seven more months of hard work before Nixon went to China. The result was a new relationship, announced in a communiqué worked out over months of careful diplomacy.Barack, in defending himself, referenced Reagan meeting with Gorbachev.
The Chinese didn't change because of a presidential visit. In another book, "Diplomacy," Mr. Kissinger writes that "China was induced to rejoin the community of nations less by the prospect of dialogue with the United States than by fear of being attacked by its ostensible ally, the Soviet Union." Change came because the U.S. convinced Beijing it was in its interest to change. Then the president visited.
A meeting with Ahmadinejad would not just strengthen and vindicate him at home, it would instantly and powerfully ease the mullahs' isolation, inviting other world leaders to follow. And with that would come a flood of commercial contracts, oil deals, diplomatic agreements -- undermining precisely the very sanctions and isolation that Obama says he would employ against Iran.Now Obama is saying his detractors are "obsessed". Balderdash. Obama sprung the new doctrine of Presidential level engagement. Obama mischaracterized U.S. efforts as "not talking" - then labeled that strawman "a disgrace". Obama serially asserted invalid comparisons involving 5 U.S. Presidents. When his doctrine and assertions are found wanting; when he cannot defend himself on merit: he falls back on "obsession" + "this is a distraction". Horse manure.
[...]
What concessions does Obama imagine Ahmadinejad will make to him on Iran's nuclear program? And what new concessions will Obama offer? To abandon Lebanon? To recognize Hamas? Or perhaps to squeeze Israel?
Having lashed himself to the ridiculous, unprecedented promise of unconditional presidential negotiations -- and then having compounded the problem by elevating it to a principle -- Obama keeps trying to explain. On Sunday, he declared in Pendleton, Ore., that by Soviet standards Iran and others "don't pose a serious threat to us." (On the contrary. Islamic Iran is dangerously apocalyptic. Soviet Russia was not.) The next day in Billings, Mont.: "I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave."
That's the very next day, mind you. Such rhetorical flailing has done more than create an intellectual mess. It has given rise to a new political phenomenon: the metastatic gaffe. The one begets another, begets another, begets ...
I can guarantee - to the American people - because of the inaction of the United States Congress: ever increasing prices - unless the demand comes down. And the $5 [per gallon] will look like a very low price, in the years to come, if we are prohibited from finding new reserves, new opportunities to increase supplies.Maxine Waters, D-CA, in reply:
And guess what this liberal will be all about? This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh, would be about ... basically ... taking over, and the government running all of your [oil] companies.Video:
If I believed in kharma, I'd be really worried about you guys.
activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.
Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them. That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.
[...]
what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.
Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK. But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini. And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez? I certainly cannot.
If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned"no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies."This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.
Sergey Says: May 21st, 2008 at 2:56 am
It is very hard to assess popularity of any terroristic totalitarian regime. It can look monolitic even when popular resentment fills every pore of society. But one thing is certain: its leadership strive for international recognition and legitimization to keep its grasp of society. So to undermine it from within it is crucial to deny it such recognition, so all direct talks and official contacts with Western politicians would be used as propaganda tools to prolong its life. They should be officially prohibited by West, if we are serious in attempts to isolate and denormalize it.
Obama's Nuanced Position on Ahmadinejad Nuances to the Point of IncoherenceAw ... what the heck:
No preconditions, but there will be "preparations."
He's reversed himself on meeting with Ahmadinejad (maybe), but will meet with "leadership" which may or may not include him.
He's unwilling to say what he's willing to concede to Iran.
He's also unwilling to explain how his plan of diplomacy without threat of force will do any better than Bush's six year strategy of diplomacy with threat of force.
[...]
And, whatever his current position may (or may not) eventually turn out to be, you shouldn't question him too closely on any of this, because it all is, yes, once again a "distraction" from the things we should be talking about,
"A base hit drives in eleven syllables."
MEMO TO THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN: When somebody condemns appeasement, it doesn't help things to jump up and yell "Hey, he's talking about me!"The first root of Barack's reaction is the left's conviction: "War is never the answer."
Christianity is not about comfort. It is about truth. If one searches for truth, one may find comfort.Tough. Existence is tough. Hard as nails. Harder, actually.
It's ... strikingly acceptable to declare Hillary's voters racist lately, isn't it?Related: 1, 2
Above: Courtney Friel, some TV guy, Shira Lazar 
Above: part of Palo Duro Canyon, in the Texas Panhandle"There is more than one kind of reality;... there is something above and beyond ... which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us."[1]
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"a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears to me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong."[2]
"Make something of himself" is not the perspective I would most ideally choose as motivation, but, close enough(!)
For the first time, I know exactly why Jake is going to make something of himself: he has a spiritual sense of right and wrong which will guide and encourage him! If he doesn't do right, he will feel responsible and uncomfortable.
Always before, if Jewel had said this, I would've wondered "But, WHY is he going to make something of himself?" Now, for the first time, I truly know the answer!
I pledge allegiance to the flag, and to however many states there are now.... h/t
it’s a very fortunate thing that men have such intense sex drives and therefore are willing to put up with so much sh** just to get some, thus continuing the existence of our species.
Hamilton's future is in RF, so let's get him there. Let's walk Josh out to RF in Arlington, show him the angles of the fences, tell him we want him to become an expert on those angles because it will be his home for 10 years, and pull out a pen and a contract for 10 years and $100M. Then we should start passing out little cloth forearm sleeves with tattoos on them to all the Ranger fans sitting in right field, so they can wave at Josh. We also should post all kinds of daily affirmation signs and biblical verses around the RF wall to keep Josh focused on the right path. At the start of every inning, as Josh runs out into RF, all the fans can stand up and salute him with their tattoo sleeves, and the scoreboard will flash that inning's affirmation for the whole crowd to read out loud."$100M" might not be enough. It's an amazing day when your generous contract estimates might be less than market reality.
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