gehringer_2

4 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Well, it all comes down to WTF you going to do about it? We ain't voting our way out of this.

But many still think we can. They are delusional.

"We have met the enemy, and He is Us."

--Pogo, 1972

12 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Are we just figuring this out? We have had the big red white and blue stuffed into us as Carlin so eloquently explained in 1991, known as the American Dream skit. You gotta be asleep to believe it.

35 years when you do the math...

Yup. It's should be pretty obvious to anyone who has their eyes open, but the population is economically illiterate. The idea that capitalism is a real thing with moving parts and good and bad properties and sets of predictable outcomes is miles over the head of the average American who is conditioned to never think about these things in more than misty 10sec slogan sound bites. And there are billions of dollars being spent in every political cycle to create enough confusion to make sure the public stays just as ignorant as it is now.

So we reach a point where even Joe 6 pack has realized the system is failing him, but he doesn't know why or how or what should be done about it. So you end up with a lot of very mad but very gullible voters.

1 hour ago, CMRivdogs said:

Trickle down economy has never worked. All $$ eventually trickles up to the rich guys

capitalism is inherently concentrative. You can always make better investments when you can make bigger investments and capital will always concentrate. That's a feature. So if you don't want to end up in a banana republic, you need to support strongly progressive taxation and robust government expenditure on human investment and inheritance taxes. This is not a matter of political philosophy, it's a matter of economic reality.

Of course, it is also one that the rich do their damndest to obfuscate by casting it wrongly as a matter of free market philosophy and personal liberty, and at that they have been extremely successful since 1980.

1 hour ago, Tigger said:

can't easily sculpt a ball in mid air though. Maybe if you put it all in a big magnetic field.....

5 minutes ago, buddha said:

all this assumes a lot, like the fact they ACTUALLY WANT to play together

or that they all even agree on whether they want to play together.  (Sttrangely enough I've been rereading The Brothers Karamazov, so I'm in a mode to question all fraternal claims....😉)

5 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

This decision is so nonsensically stupid and wrong that it should be in the Political forum.  
 

Jan 27th National Championship.  FOH

They're just thinking ahead. It will make perfect sense when the NFL has gone to 24 games and the Superbowl is in April.

SPTTINSTATMF

(somepeoplethinkthereisnosuchthingastoomuchfootball)

10 minutes ago, Hongbit said:

Nobody has any idea what the brothers intentions are but I can tell you that if NJ miss the playoffs this year and next, there may be no Hughes brothers still on the team for Quinn to want to play with. 

but that's the other twist here. Lets say the Devils look like they aren't going to be very good going forward and you are the team that signs Quinn to a 6 or 7 yr deal. Is he then going to spend all his energy lobbying you to bring in his bros from NJ as their contracts expire? Is that going to be good for your team? Are you going to do it even if if isn't to keep your star happy?  

It's all speculation but it's just another thing that needs to at least be in the back of your mind if you decide to deal with a guy with siblings in the league who has already said he wants to play with them.

10 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

No clue honestly.  Using part of their TPE makes it even worse. 

 

are they up against the salary minimum?

21 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

Except, they are all white! 

look again.

if that hand looks white to you, you spend a lot of time in places a lot sunnier than MN. 

21 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

They are saying the quiet part out load now. Multiple times too.

 

 

 

Inside baseball. Look at the hand at the 30 sec mark. The women may have been white, but the guy flipping  off the car whose voice you are probably hearing is black. If you are white, you don't get to comment on the use of the word between blacks. That's just the way it is.

56 minutes ago, buddha said:

on the topic of edvinsson, i think he is going to be as good or better than seider.  he's taller and more mobile.  i see those two developing into the best pair in the nhl.

hughes is a special offensive talent, i get it.  but i think edvinsson is going to be a special DEFENSEman.

They aren't quite the same kind of player - which probably makes them a better pair. I don't think Edvinsson can match Seider's wheels. Mortitz is an exceptional skater for a big man so wouldn't see Simon matching what Moritz can do as high man on the PP for instance, but I agree he's becoming a real force. Good stick and he's gotten to be a very tough match for anyone to take on at the boards.

HaHa- they get the 2 least likely points of the 10 available in the 5 games before the break.

37 minutes ago, oblong said:

A friend in the industry tells me that the Detroit incarnation hasn’t paid their truck fees all month and that Channel 20 is something that the Ilitches have had their eye on for awhile. 

I am not putting an antenna back up on my house. OTOH, I'll be thrilled to dump DirectTV if I can get the Tigers somewhere else.

3b is Keith's. The only question is whether he can close his platoon split down closer to where it was in '24 (when he had no platoon split) and play there full time, or whether he'll remain on the long side of a platoon there.

I'll aslo disagree with a lot of the apparent consensus that assumes Baez is going to fall back to utility status. I don't think that is likely.  I think the probabilities are highest he ends up nearly fully time, though possibly with a lot of his PA's coming as the  CF if McGonigle make the team.

FWIW: this from the freep today:

Quote

Despite the "business-as-usual" setup between Main Street and its NBA and NHL partners, Friend reports that Main Street missed its Feb. 1 payment to those teams, including the Pistons and Red Wings. Friend also reports the Red Wings, who like the Tigers are owned by Ilitch Sports and Entertainment, are expected to move to MLB Media along with the Tigers.

MLB media getting into the hockey biz?

32 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Here in Big Shoulders, we use a touch-screen which then prints out a paper record of your vote to take with you for your reference. The paper contains no PII,

we have mark sense ballots and machine readers. The ballots all get collected in the base of the reader as permanent records. The funny thing is we've had these for years now, and there is a privacy sleeve the ballot goes in so you can carry it over to the reader and feed it in, but the sleeves  have never actually worked so you  could feed the ballots in without having to pretty much take them out first - defeating the purpose - and that part never changes.

the biggest virtue of this system is that recounts are really easy as you can just run the ballots through another reader for verification.

5 minutes ago, oblong said:

I’ve been voting since 1992 and have done nothing other than fill in a circle on a paper ballot. 

Kids nowadays......

1 hour ago, Arlington said:

I've been wanting to post about how dang boring this off season has been, but have restrained myself from stating the obvious.  I usually love the off season. 

really, what's more boring that another post about how boring this off-season has been.

...what?..wait....nevermind.

51 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

 

tell you what, if in this environment, Hakim Jeffries isn't clever enough to find a way to peel one rep off the other side, it will go down in history as a real fail of democratic party leadership.

1 hour ago, tiger2022 said:

They just don't want to spend any of it.

It's more than that though. There is internal pressure from other owners. Owners don't want any of their brethren to operate at a loss even if they could afford to because it undermines franchise values across the board, and the loss of a franchise to financial failure is at this point is considered too traumatic to allow. The ownership club would much rather have franchises like the Athletics just limp along as 2nd class citizens than let them get over-extended and have to shut them down or worse, take on their liabilities.

21 hours ago, romad1 said:

 

It was Adelson's candidate with a big bankroll that didn't make it out of the 1st round in Tx Senate 9.

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Can you share with me why those machines are untrustworthy? I don’t know anything about them, specifically. 

no - that's why the laugh as the premise. I just always found the experience using them to be unnerving because it feels like when you are done and you open the curtain the machine is undoing your vote. It doesn't of course, but it's easy to watch all those levers you flipped down pop back up and wonder if they actually got counted, because the machine gives you no clue or confirmation that it's tabulating the votes, all you see is the levers go back up.

2 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

. I would leave most of this for the states to decide since elections are still run by the states and not the Federal Goverment, 

That's the other thing. I'm sure all Trump has done with this screed is tick off more Texans by accusing them of not running an honest election. Texans are nothing if not proud.

18 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

 

backlog of US gov purchasing from the shutdown?

8 minutes ago, buddha said:

were ron holland and ausar thompson supposed to be "3 and d" guys?

cause theyre not.

IDK, if a guy can shoot but isn't an athlete, can he ever become one? Nope.  If a guy is an athlete and is still only 19, might he develop a shot? Well...maaaaybe. It almost never works out but I think that's the logic behind the popularity of that kind of pick.