The Baltimore Orioles really struggled in the season’s second half, going 17-26 in the International League. Fortunately for Baltimore, they still managed to hold off the Charlotte Knights and Gwinnett Stripers by a comfortable margin in the South Division. Advancing to the postseason, the Orioles rallied to capture the league title with series wins over the Rochester Red Wings and Toledo Mud He — wait, what?
That scenario is a hypothetical minor league season simulated by Out of the Park Developments at the request of FiveThirtyEight. In reality, the Orioles are actually a major league team that resides in the American League East, where they were a staggering 60 games behind the division-leading Boston Red Sox entering play Tuesday. The record for most games back of a division (or, before divisions, league) leader was set in 1909 by the Cleveland Spiders, who finished 65 1/2 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates. And yes, you can place bets on whether the Orioles will break that mark.
Our forecast calls for Baltimore to lose 115 games, which would be tied for the fourth-most losses in a season since 1901. The AL record for games lost in a season is 119 by the infamously bad 2003 Detroit Tigers, while the 1962 New York Mets — an expansion club — hold the modern major league record for losses in a season (120). Both of those numbers are achievable for Baltimore this season. And the Orioles aren’t alone: The Kansas City Royals are also remarkably terrible, projected to lose 105 games. If the Royals and Orioles each lose at least 105 games, they would be the first teams to do so in the same season since 2002.
After unloading many of their assets at the trade deadline, Baltimore and Kansas City are struggling so mightily against real MLB teams that we were curious to see how they would stack up if they were relegated to Triple-A. At what point does the designation between a major and minor league team start to blur? And what are the implications of that blurring for the broader world of Major League Baseball?
To help answer the first question, we started with a minor league equivalency (MLE) calculator, which converts MLB statistics to their corresponding Triple-A numbers. The MLEs were not bullish on Baltimore’s chances in Triple-A: Assuming there is an 18 percent bump in wins above replacement12 when moving down from the majors to the minors,13 the Orioles were still projected to have just a .446 winning percentage in Triple-A. And the Royals? Their 2018 performance translates to a .489 winning percentage in Triple-A. For comparison’s sake, the Philadelphia Phillies are the most average team in baseball this season according to WAR. Their major league performance translates to a .585 winning percentage in Triple-A.
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Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T One of the many things about former President Barack Obama that caused great consternation among many Americans was his apparent inability to utter the words “radical,” “Islamist” and “terrorist” all in the same sentence, much less strung together as an apt descriptive term for violent jihadists waging war against the West.
Whether Obama’s refusal to say that particular phrase — and Lord knows he had ample opportunities to do so throughout his tenure in office — was due to an affinity for the Muslim faith or because he was beholden to the orthodoxy of liberal political correctness may never truly be known.
But while that accurate description of Islamic jihadists rarely, if ever, crossed Obama’s lips, President Donald Trump has no such qualms about using the term, especially when speaking about the atrocities committed by “radical Islamist terrorists.”
According to Breitbart, Trump used the phrase to describe the 19 hijackers who commandeered commercial airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and an open field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T Not content with simply packing the Supreme Court with conservative justices that threaten to undo every progressive ruling in modern times, President Trump and the Republicans today revealed their latest effort to mold the courts to do their bidding.
The House quietly unveiled a major series of judicial bills that would break up the 9th Circuit court that has declared so many of Trump’s executive orders on immigration as illegal, among other court reforms.
Todd Ruger, the legal affairs correspondent for Roll Call, commented on the contents of the bills in a series of tweets today.
The division of the 9th Circuit Court and the expansion the number of judges would offer Trump the opportunity to appoint another group of right-wing jurists to the new seats and dilute the power of the more progressive current judges to roll back any unconstitutional policies that the administration may issue.
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Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T On Friday, the liberal women who make up ABC’s “The View” seemed to mock First Lady Melania Trump’s accent, which prompted the first lady’s spokeswoman to fire back in a statement.
The mockery arose when “The View” panelists were discussing the anonymous commentary piece published last week by The New York Times that purported to be written by a senior member of the Trump administration. The discussion focused on “The View’s” typical liberal talking points until co-host Sunny Hostin mentioned she was “struck” by the first lady’s statement.
Hostin looked prepared to read the statement in an accent before saying, “Oh, I can’t do an accent” as Whoopi Goldberg warned her off.
Hostin proceeded to read Trump’s statement in a sarcastic tone that was certainly not her own, normal voice. It wasn’t an impersonation of Melania Trump’s accent, but given the context, her meaning — and mockery — was clear.
The first lady’s press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, fired back at “The View” in a tweet responding to an article published by Raw Story.
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Senate Republicans have gone from confidently predicting the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to a new message: It all comes down to Thursday.
The GOP is staking Kavanaugh’s prospects to his hearing later this week, when he and Christine Blasey Ford will testify publicly about her allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school more than 30 years ago. It’s a shift that puts some of the onus on Kavanaugh to convince a growing number of wary senators whether his word is more credible than hers in the battle over the high court seat.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is warning his colleagues publicly and privately that his plan is to hold a floor vote on Kavanaugh no matter what happens in the Judiciary Committee, possibly as soon as early next week. Though Kavanaugh currently lacks the votes to be confirmed, the GOP leader is signaling that he will hold the vote anyway to force all 100 senators to go on record and put maximum pressure on red state Democrats that the GOP is hoping to defeat this fall, Republican senators said.
Whether that vote will be successful remains in doubt, the senators said.
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Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T The Senate has completed their investigation of Russian collusion and like the House, they also found zero evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia.
Now, Senator Cassidy is calling for the probe to end, saying the taxpayers have spent enough on this probe, and there’s no evidence of wrongdoing.
Daily Caller
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana called Wednesday for an end to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling during President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
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Just before Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas this week, President Donald Trump sent one North Carolina mayor a special surprise. It was much appreciated by the mayor, who was preparing for a devastating natural disaster. However, the liberal media has been all but silent about it, not wanting to draw attention to anything positive and slamming the president instead. Let’s spread this everywhere!
The nation braced this week for the landfall of Hurricane Florence, with residents of the Carolinas evacuating and preparing their homes for the worst. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump was diligently working to make sure that all necessary preparations had been made before the storm hit in order to ensure the least amount of damage was incurred as possible. This included making sure that FEMA had all of the necessary resources, as well as local authorities in the Carolinas.
Typically, the president will establish a line of communication with a state’s governor prior to an impending natural disaster in order to express the federal government’s support in lending a hand at the state level. However, President Trump went one step further to make sure the people of North Carolina receive everything they need in the wake of Hurricane Florence: He is apparently putting in calls to local mayors, as well.
On Thursday, during a media briefing on the approach of Hurricane Florence, Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo’s phone rang. Initially, he declined the call, as he was understandably busy with hurricane preparations. But, when the Washington, D.C., number called back once again, he knew that it was important, so he answered. However, it wasn’t Saffo’s representative in the House or the Senate calling to express their support nor was it an official from FEMA calling to brief the mayor on protocol with the storm fast approaching.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GmAPugQMC8
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A woman whom Senate GOP investigators believe may have been at the party where Christine Blasey Ford claimed she was sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh is denying that she knows the Supreme Court nominee.
In an email to the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Saturday evening and obtained by POLITICO, Leland Keyser said she does not know Kavanaugh or remember being at a party with him. The committee believed Keyser was one of the unnamed people referred to in a Washington Post story whom Ford remembered attending the high school party.
"Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford," said Howard Walsh, who said he has been "engaged in the limited capacity" of corresponding with the committee on behalf of Keyser.
Walsh's email was in response to a missive from one of the lawyers for the GOP majority staff, which stated: "I understand that you have been identified as an individual who was in attendance at a party that occurred circa 1982 described in a recent Washington Post article."
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Subscribe to the channel at https://goo.gl/VjHw6T Alors que son parti a remporté tous les sièges au Parlement, le dirigeant, accusé de dérive autoritaire, doit donner quelques gages à l’Occident malgré le soutien de la Chine.
Après avoir rétabli au Cambodge un système de facto à parti unique, le premier ministre Hun Sen a décidé de se montrer quelque peu magnanime : 14 militants de l’opposition qui étaient emprisonnés depuis quatre ans ont été libérés, mardi 28 août, après que le chef du gouvernement eut demandé un « pardon royal » à Sa Majesté Sihamoni, le fils du prince Sihanouk. Ce dernier a remplacé son père sur le trône de cette monarchie constitutionnelle en 2004. Mais la demande n’était qu’une pure formalité : les prisonniers avaient d’abord envoyé des lettres d’excuses à Hun Sen, l’indéboulonnable premier ministre depuis trente-trois ans…
L’élargissement de ces opposants inculpés pour « insurrection » en raison de leur participation à de violentes manifestations de rues en 2014, survient après la libération d’autres prisonniers de conscience, la semaine dernière : la célèbre activiste Tep Vanny, qui en était à sa quatrième incarcération après avoir défendu – en vain – des habitants de Phnom Penh chassés de chez eux pour laisser la place à des projets immobiliers, a été « pardonnée », lundi 20 août, alors qu’elle devait encore purger six mois d’une peine d’un an et demi.
Deux journalistes du service en langue khmère de la radio américaine Radio Free Asia (RFA), Oun Chhin et Yeang Sothearin, sont sortis de prison mardi matin : emprisonnés depuis novembre 2017, ils étaient poursuivis en justice pour « utilisation illégale » d’un studio d’enregistrement.
En position de force
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KeN0e4N5tA