Chris Mitchell Iraq Truck Driver

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Obama to meet with families of soldiers
President Barack Obama plans to meet privately with families of the 30 Americans killed in an International Security Assistance Force helicopter crash in eastern Afghanistan while supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Obama and top Pentagon officials including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen are attending today's dignified transfer ceremony for 38 U.S. and Afghan personnel killed on board a helicopter shot down in Afghanistan over the weekend.
Two planes carrying the remains landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware this morning, according to Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan.
Obama arrived at the air base at 12:30 p.m. on one of four helicopters carrying the president, his staff and accompanying reporters.
Panetta, Mullen and the chiefs of the Navy and Army were among the 11 senior military and Defense Department officials who also would be there for the dignified transfer ceremony, Lapan said.
Because the catastrophic nature of the crash made the remains difficult to identify, all were brought in more than 38 transfer cases to the United States, Lapan said. The Afghan remains will be returned to their families once identifications can be made.
The slain U.S. service members represent the worst single-incident loss of American life since the start of the Afghan war.
-- CNN



Also, the stock market gained back a little of its losses, but experts say don't get your hopes set too high.

Sandoval Comps « Bay City Ball | Giants Baseball with a Side of ...

A couple of weeks ago I posted an A – B comparison between Pablo Sandoval and Robinson Cano. The goal was to look at similar players that had success at a young age. To me, Sandoval and Cano were similar because of their shared ‘swing at everything’ hitting approach and early success. At the tail end of the post, I found a couple of more players that fit my criteria (in the same age range as Pablo, had early success, struggled, and then got things back on track). However, I wasn’t happy with the comparisons because they both profiled as big sluggish power hitting first basemen.

In an effort to find more suitable comps, I expanded my Baseball-Reference search to the following

* Must have played 60% of their games at 3B — this should help weed out the Jason Thompson/George Scott player-types

* Ages from 21-27, Sandoval’s early success makes him unique, I expanded the age range to try and get more players in the dataset

* I’m still using OPS+ as my barometer for success on offense

This time, I think the search returned better results. The following players fall in our range of young third basemen that experienced early success. This time I’m not only looking at those who got back on track, but everyone regardless of how they turned out.

The Good Comps

Chris Brown – Brown was drafted by the Giants in the 2nd round (#44 overall) in the 1979 draft. He played with the Giants from 1984-87. At ages 23 and 24 he hit a combined .294/.360/.432 (125 OPS+) in 945 PAs. He made the All-Star team in 1986. Brown had shoulder problems going into the 1987 season and had surgery before the season. He never had an above average season again, hitting only .232/.289/.33 (73 OPS+) over the remaining 650 PAs of his career. In Giants lore, Brown is most known for being traded to the San Diego Padres along with Keith Comstock, Mark Grant, and Mark Davis for Kevin Mitchell, Dave Dravecky, and Craig Lefferts. It’s hard to find any detailed information on Brown’s shoulder problems, but it goes to show that young players that have early success aren’t always a lock for sustained success.

A history of Iraq

Machine learning, an artificial intelligence approach

Truck

Iraq, issues, historical background, bibliography

Iraq