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They are doing you a favor. A colleague of mine just now with a great quote "The stock market is a device to transfer wealth from the impatient to the patient."

First off, I like the Walz pick a lot. I think it helps shore up the base with progressive voters and gets them reengaged into this election. There will always be a segment of the left that will find qualms with any Democrat not named Bernie, AOC, Rashida, etc. Given Tim Walz list of people-focused, progressive accomplishments as Governor of Minnesota (free lunch program, gun safety reforms, public education spending, child tax credits, etc.) I think it's enough to excite the progressive/left base of the party to get out and vote for Kamala. The other big thing I like about Walz is his appeal to men, specifically white working class men. While we will never win a majority or anything close to even with white working class men, Walz does give us a chance at holding onto to some of the ones Biden won back. He can the Hank and Peggy Hills of the world that might not vote for Trump but aren't exactly excited to hold their nose and vote Democrat. He also overperforms, to an extent, with working class voters in rural America. I still don't think many of those voters will vote for a black women named Kamala, but picking Walz certainly doesn't hurt. Walz has that authentic, folksy, everyman kind of persona. He has a record of service in the military, he was a HS football coach, he's a dad. As a friend said to me this morning, he seems like the kind of guy that actually likes going to the state fair and eating a corn dog, riding the rides, and being there. Not a guy whose only doing it for the photo opp. He also neutralizes JD Vance's military service record because he has served himself. I don't know if there is one, singular, big knock on Tim Walz. Certainly nothing that compares to what Trump has done. I think their knock on Walz will be more of the same they've already been attacking Kamala on. Too far to the left, too radical, a marxist, bad on the border, responsible for high inflation, etc.

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/10-significant-top-100-prospects-risers-fallers-so-far-in-2024/ Jobe and McGonigle make this list as risers. Jackson Jobe, RHP, Tigers A hamstring injury sidelined Jackson Jobe for nearly two months at Double-A Erie and had limited him to just 10 starts through the end of July. But when 22-year-old righthander has been healthy, he has offered plenty of evidence to support his case as the best pitching prospect in the minor leagues. Jobe throws four pitches that all grade as average or better, topped by a plus 96-98 mph fastball and a double-plus low-80s slider. A low-90s cutter he added this season has been a separator. He throws the pitch for strikes, especially called ones when batters are on high alert for his devastating fastball or slider. At the end of July, opposing batters had managed to hit just .132/.245/.182 versus Jobe. When Jobe is on, he’s unhittable. Case in point: He threw the first six innings of a combined no-hitter for Erie in mid July. With three potential plus pitches and a disrupting cutter in his repertoire, Jobe has the type of potential to one day front the Tigers’ rotation. —JJ Cooper Kevin McGonigle, SS, Tigers Kevin McGonigle hits the ball hard. He hits the ball often. He stays within his strike zone. The 19-year-old, lefthanded-hitting Tigers shortstop had almost as many extra-base hits as strikeouts at Low-A Lakeland in his first full pro season. McGonigle earned a promotion to High-A West Michigan in late July, roughly a year after he was ranked as the top pure hitter among high schoolers in a loaded 2023 draft class. The supplemental first-rounder from the Philadelphia area hit .326 with 35 walks and 24 strikeouts in the Florida State League. As he did in high school, McGonigle looked comfortable against righthanders and left, velocity and offspeed, young and old. While a potential plus bat is the draw, McGonigle has a chance for near-average or possibly average power and speed. Scouts rave about his baseball IQ. He’s not the rangiest or most explosive defender, but he makes routine plays at shortstop and is more than capable at second base. Barrel accuracy and strike-zone discipline are McGonigle’s calling cards, making him the Tigers’ potential leadoff hitter of the future. —Matt Eddy

So, that would make Penny Flanagan the new Minnesota governor… a friend told me that she is a Native American, not sure which tribe …. But that would make her the first Native American governor!

The Harris/Walz ticket will be hell for the apostrophe impaired.

Harris’s VP will be [better than Vance], because [Vance is weird].

I really like Tim Walz, have liked him long before this process... But I do sort of have a bad taste in my mouth that the process that led to him being picked led to a lot of impugning of Josh Shapiro and his faith. People can skewer me for that, but that's how I feel.

Well... That's not really rope-a-dope either... Short on weapons = slowly losing ground... Have weapons = Turn the tables. It's a simple problem of adequate supplies, I would think...

Should of kept.

It is probably true for most people, that whether consciously or not, they first react emotionally to some question, then attach themselves intellectually to some rational arguments in support of what they feel about it. Then if/when they enter into some kind of dialogue about it, maybe their mind changes or they think the arguments they adopted remain strong enough that they hold to their position. But there a process (a dialectic if you will) where terms get defined and points of agreement and disagreement and fundamental premises are stated. That is sort of the ideal level of an integrated human intellect. What I think we see more and more of today is with social and media segregation the second part of the process never gets off the ground for too many. They aren't prepared to go beyond their negative emotional response to something and make any defense of why what they are feeling should be justifiable to anyone else who disagrees. There are kindred spirits in their immediate circle who validate them and that is enough. Thus to reject someone's feelings becomes the same as not allowing them their argument. Both sides play to this, but conservatism, being based on resistance to/fear of possible unwelcome consequences of change has a natural predisposition to play to fear above all other emotions, making it far more prone to this kind of elevation of emotion over rationality. For me to come to this conclusion is doubly ironic because in my political youth, it was conservatives like William Buckley who were often the calmer more rational voices as opposed to the supercharged emotion of the anti-war movement. But in the long run I've realized the '60s were the anomaly in that regard. The atavistic fears of conservatism were there, they were just disguised with more sophistication.

https://liveuamap.com/en/2024/6-august-according-to-russian-telegram-channels-units-of and Looks like Ukraine has a push going in Kursk that will shake things up for a while. It would be amazing if they were able to use Western military close air support tactics techniques and procedures with the F-16 but that is a very advanced step. Then again, they are fighting for their very homes.

AOC and Manchin approve. Dogs sleeping with cats??

You don't make VP campagin videos... but this could be an exception. That is not a transactional law. His joy is because all kids can eat. Like.... who can be against that? (We know who)

Like a lot of communities around here, our garbage contract was under GFL, who got bought out by Priority Waste. It's been kind of a **** show. But that's not my problem. My problem is the compaints. Get over it. I don't care if my can sits out there another day. These workers are doing their best. It's been hot as balls and it's not a glamorous job. I'm sure it's hard to find employees. I just wish that worrying about the garbage pickup was the biggest concern of my day. Life must be great if that's on your mind.

As a Jew myself, this hurts to hear in 2024. What happened to this country?

the white sox losing streak is 21. it is now old enough to drink.

We have game threads for this sort of discussion. Kindly use them rather than starting new threads in the future. Thanks.

Breaking news Apparently Walz is a Seger fan This **** is over. It's done.

i think that's now 10 days; not on IL, so not sure what is going on with him

Walz sounds like a foreigner name….. is he after one of those black jobs?

Kerry Carpenter in the lineup for Toledo tonight

I have blocked or unfollowed most political commentators on Twitter, but this guy is one of the best political follows on Twitter. For someone who initially seemed like a total douche, he turned out to be pretty intelligent.

if someone close to the campaign says it, then I think tampons wil become a useful prop. So far it just seems like a twitter thing. As usual on that site whenever I see something is trending, I click on it, and its just a bunch of tweets talking about the fact its trending but I don't see the sources. So I guess I can't get on them... yet. But it certainly sounds like something that side says.

Yeah, he looks like 60 year olds looked when I was a kid. Now that I'm 50, 60 looks like Brad Pitt.

Try to keep up there guy. I've been saying it for months. Those are the dozens and dozens of antisemitic videos you posted, as I've pointed out dozens of times.

I can picture Walz working at Ford in Sterling Heights, going up north to his cabin in Houghton Lake, and riding his snowmobile to Tip Up Town. I think he will have a good appeal in Michigan and Wisconsin.

The confusion comes from being so embedded inside that they honestly can’t acknowledge the obvious things everyone else can see.

To me one of Walz's strengths is that he won't shy from the label, he embraces it and can explain to you why he, as a 'Bubba' himself, thinks you need to see what he does. He also has the advantage that in Minnesota, you might say liberalism is very conservative. I know that sounds weird, but people in MN tend to be both liberal and hard headed (living there was sort of the antithesis of A^2!), so you seldom see even liberal programs in MN that have silly or ideological excesses - so I'm going to guess his liberalism carries less potential baggage as your average 'coastal elite' liberal might.

I expected it from the right. What threw me off was how bad it is on the left.

Shapiro will still be very visible. I hope they let Walz be Walz; will be some errors, but the media are going to love writing vapid stories about his everyday man stuff. SHould be great two months. I doubt it, but progressives should be happy and actually on board. Of course, they will sit this one out yet again.

It will also help energize the progressives. Harris doesn't really have the kind of progressive street cred, Walz does.

Kiley McDaniel puts the farm at #6 overall after the draft and trade deadline. 6. Detroit Tigers -- $272 million Current top prospect: Jackson Jobe, RHP Preseason ranking: 3rd, $318 million What has happened since: The Tigers have fallen a bit due to graduations from Colt Keith and Parker Meadows, but they have the talent to jump back into the top three in short order. They added Bryce Rainer in the draft, who goes straight into the middle of the Top 100 and could be a top-10 overall prospect at some point. My pick to click in the 2023 draft, Kevin McGonigle, has done just that, hitting his way to High-A as a teenager with more walks than strikeouts while showing the potential to shoot up the Top 100 when he's in the upper levels. It goes without saying that Max Clark could also be a top-10 prospect in the game in the near future. Adding Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney in the Jack Flaherty deal and Ethan Schiefelbein in the second round of the draft give them another set of players I expect will move up my list in the coming year.

Persecution complex, along these lines:

I've seen this contrasted with Gov Suckabee Handers who had kids around her when she signed a law allowing them to work longer.... they looked like they were sold into slavery.

The QAnon wing is going to have a field day with this picture. There goes the Pizzagate vote, I guess.

I'm probably wrong, that's usually the default, but it seems like I have not seen a Tiger series in Seattle since before COVID. It seems like the Tigers are always in Seattle during the work week, and they are all night games. This does not jive at all with my schedule.

They tried but we can’t keep penciling a guy like that into the depth chart preseason. It’s not his fault but even our depth needs to be more dependable than this.

Y’all know the ballad of Joel Youngblood, right? Actually, it’s probably more of a story than a ballad. https://www.mlb.com/news/joel-youngblood-two-hits-for-two-teams

Obviously this is because of Joe Bidens rhetoric.

Guessing anyone here age 55+ will remember this throw by Dave Parker

Kinda surprised that’s never happened before. Especially when the schedule was imbalanced and you had make up games scheduled awkwardly.

Sox next manager?

We're a shiny beast...12-5 ..deep run in the playoffs again.

After I posted this, I started thinking about it a little more, and it may have taken an embarrassingly long time to arrive at this, but I think I finally figured out why the evangelicals and other staunch Christians gravitate to Trump: their core identities revolve around being martyrs who are constantly persecuted. Christianity itself has a very basic persecution origin story: God Himself sent his Son to Earth to spread His message of peace and love, and the apostates, aided by the Jews, God’s once-chosen people, persecuted Him literally to Death. The early history of Christianity is littered with persecution stories: how the Romans fed them to the lions; how the Jews and Persians drove the Christians out of Jerusalem in the 7th Century; how the Muslims tried to wipe out the Christians in the Crusade. This history of persecution is crucial to how Christians understand themselves and their place in the world. (Of course, their history doesn’t include how the Christians set up the Inquisitions to murder millions of unbelievers, but that’s neither here nor there for this post.) Even today, Christians love to regale anyone who might listen with tales of how their fellow believers are still being persecuted or even genocided today, in places like communist countries or Africa or Asia or any number of other places where Christians do not predominate. Even in this country, Christians constantly rail against certain parts of the culture, such as the media or Hollywood or academia, that do not elevate them and their beliefs to the privileged status they feel they deserve as being persecution on a cultural level. To maintain the fiction that the entire world is constantly trying to persecute them out of existence is vital to their self-identification. Trump, of course, has his own persecution story: he grew up ostracized by his peers, shunned by the polite society he craved attention and approval from, and worst of all, was given the cold shoulder by the father he adored. He has spent his entire adult life raging against “elites”, and fighting against what he perceives as the persecution of him, and he just. Won’t. Shut. The ****. Up. About it. And the ironic thing about all this, of course, is how both Trump and the Christians have succeeded almost beyond belief: Trump has been widely-considered one of the greater business tycoons of the 20th and 21st centuries and spent that entire period at least flirting with billionairehood; and the Christians have become a supermajority in the most powerful country in this history of the world, with large swaths of their believers controlling the government and constantly angling to use the machinations of what is supposed to be a secular government to legally privilege themselves and codify their beliefs into law. So how can two entities with such a core belief in their own persecution mythology not gravitate toward one another?