gehringer_2

Of course he will be. And hopefully that leads to another GOP seat lost as the GOP puts up another wacko for election that can't win.

and billions of watts being generated to accomplish this.

to me, the objective evidence is that tanking has only gotten worse with the lottery because you are increasing the number of teams willing to take a gamble on the #1. With a straight inverse order draft, you only had one or maybe two teams that vied for absolute worst, and since the difference in the value of a pick drops off pretty fast once you get past the 2nd or 3rd pick, I just don't see that many teams other than the very worst teams trying to move down. I think the evidence is the lottery has encouraged non-playoff teams to try to get worse because they might have a shot at a #1. Leave them facing the difference between a #5 and #8 and I think they keep playing, because before the lottery that is pretty much what happened. I would go back to no lottery, simple inverse order, and maybe a limit that you can't pick in the top three more than 2 years out of 5 or something similar. A league can tolerate one team being a joke each season.

I don't know if I would go for that, but one dodge I think does need to be closed is basis reset on a spouse's inherited capital gains.

nice to see someone in a high position decide not to deny the obvious.

"One of the connections that is underdiscussed — particularly in the security space — is that we are seeing, around the world and in the United States, extreme levels of income inequality leads to social instability and drives authoritarianism, populism, and very dangerous domestic, internal politics. "That is a direct outcome of not just income inequality, but the failures of democracies, over decades, to deliver: the failure to deliver higher wages, the failure to rein in corporations. "In the United States, antitrust is such a foundational bedrock value not just because the ascent of monopolies creates the abuse of power by corporations in market power, but there is a level of market concentration and corporate consolidation where a massive company can get so big that its consolidated power can rival that of nation states. "In democracies, we have elected leaders. In massive corporations that then begin to consume the public sector, they start to call the shots. "We’re starting to see this with some of the billionaire class throwing their weight around in domestic politics, and in global politics as well. "It is of utmost, urgent priority that we get our economic houses in order and deliver material gains for the working-class, or else we will fall to a more isolated world governed by authoritarians — that also do not deliver to working people." I'll let you guess who wrote that. Be careful what you wish for.

Oh - I gave up dancing on the grave of Bitcoin some time ago - pretty much after it recovered after '22. But that's one party I'm not interested in joining either way.

"This week, there was yet another warning that many homeowners might be headed for trouble. The mortgage delinquency rates for lower-income households are surging, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data, which recently released its Household Debt and Credit report for the fourth quarter of 2025. According to New York Fed data, the 90-plus-day mortgage delinquency rate for families in the lowest-income bracket jumped from 0.5 percent in 2021 to nearly 3 percent by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, folks in the highest-income areas are doing just fine, maintaining “historically lower delinquency rates.” It’s another reminder that the U.S. economy is largely benefiting people with means, while financial storm clouds are gathering over those who can least afford a rainy day. As the New York Fed points out, “financial distress appears to be deepening for households in lower-income areas.” When the Fed examined what might account for the disparities in mortgage performance, it concluded the job market could be a major contributor. Although the latest jobs report from the Labor Department shows some gains in January, the rebound was limited to just a few sectors, such as health care. Nationwide, unemployment is relatively low, but “worsening” regional labor markets are making it hard for people to keep up with their mortgage payments. “Two-thirds of counties have seen their local unemployment rates rise, and 5 percent of the population lives in counties where unemployment rates have risen by more than 1.6 percentage points,” according to the New York Fed." this is from WaPo https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/14/mortgage-problems-delinquencies/

OT, but I've been looking at audio amps recently. I still have a class B rig (110 W/ch RMS) I built years ago and all the new stuff is class D, and it's actually not always easy to get an answer to that question. In large part because the Class D people feel it's irrelevant for class D amps.

I think this group plays even more against the grain than that one. Ben was really the only outlier on that team. Other than giving up O for D to the extreme at center (and you did have Okur/Rasheed as PF/C) I thought that group played a pretty conventional game. The book says this team is way too offensively challenged, doesn't have the height to protect the rim, and doesn't even have that many good on-ball defenders to be a great defensive team. But they do it anyway. IIRC, years ago Denver ( I think it was Denver anyway) thought they could change the game by running their opposition off the floor, but the league ended up going in the opposite direction. I feel this Piston team is more in that position, but with a better chance of making it work because they run and defend, Denver just ran.

is that RMS or just peak?

Absolutley.

I don't know if it's our media or our populace which is more broken. I've been thinking that part of what is doing in America is that one of the fundamental premises of the Founding Fathers has failed. The idea always was that the elites would hold each other accountable because they had to compete for the votes of the common people that way. But in the US the elites have figured out that they actually don't have to do that. Both sides have realized that you simply take accountability off the table and while you and the other side may trade being in control once in a while, your status in the elite is never really at risk over your conduct. Accountability's last stand was Watergate in 1974. Since then the Dems opened the door with Clinton and the GOP has driven a Mack Truck through it with Bush and Trump.

At UM they put me on a 5 yr schedule as they found a polyp on my first, otherwise it would have been 10. After having 2 clear they don't want to do another for 10. Of course 10 yrs is an eternity in medical science anymore so you can figure those recommendations are being reviewed on shorter intervals than that.

as long as your bacon factory's smoke doesn't comes in a bottle. (although to be perfectly honest, what's in an actual fire probably isn't all that much worse than what's in the bottle.....🤷‍♂️)

yup. And then there is the voter that for my money is the worst, which is the guy who pulls the lever out of tribal loyalty without even taking any real thought or regard for the potential consequences. "I don't care if the ship goes down as long as my 'side' always wins!"

I've been fairly aggressive for the last several years, but both because I'm uncomfortable with valuations and because I'm now older, I'm just pulling back in general, esp on anything related to the mega caps. I don't really like doing investment homework all that much. I'll spend a lot of time on it, buy some things, then let things ride quite a while between reviews. I think now is a good time to do some re-positioning.

This has been the Dems biggest problem IMO, as the middle class was becoming more an d more stressed, instead of going for the opening and moving into new economic thinking, they if anything hewed even closer to GOP trickle down, don't rock the boat, keep the corps happy, economic conservatism, and that included Obama. Biden was the first Dem to finally start taking on middle class economic issues but his efforts in that direction were lost in a lot of other noise. Part of this is the structure of campaign finance under Citizen's United - neither party is willing to risk alienating their corporate funders, but a big piece of this is just loss of intellectual creativity. They haven't had any new ideas/approaches to offer that they could make resonate as campaign assets. The only dems out there there that are willing to at least try to move the debate on structural economics (as opposed to just talking about more entitlements-though they do talk about that a lot too!) are the young progressives like AOC who are basically self-funding themselves through the internet. And of course Elizabeth Warren, because MA politics has always been a little different.

interesting note on the indexes. In the same way it has become the case that GDP is measuring gains in too narrow a segment of the economy to be meaningful for the general population, the S&P 500 isn't even a decent indicator of the overall health of American business because the market cap of the Mag7 tech companies have exploded to such huge numbers that that is all you see in what the index's value, the other 493 stocks hardly matter. My marker for this is that I was holding an S&P index fund and got a message from the fund manager last month that they had to suspend the normal fund by-law about how large a percentage of the index could be concentrated in a small number of stocks because it had come into conflict with the rule that the fund had to hold the whole 500 in proportion to market cap. That's about when I decided to get out.

It's such a good number the even the Federal Reserve doesn't use it. I think in general BLS is probably as good or better than the stat group anywhere in the world. I think the bigger problem is that we are willfully ignorant about paying attention to what the numbers do and don't mean. No greater example than the near total uncoupling of GDP and the economic health of an average American family. As long as we keep believing in the myths about certain numbers instead of paying attention better numbers that actually tell you something useful, we'll keep getting bad results for ordinary people. The old saw is that you get what you measure. We measure GDP so we keep getting GDP, even as the real socio-ecomomic health of the country goes down the tubes. The numbers may not be corrupt, but how we use them is getting to be.

what's funny to me about the Pistons is that at least by any conventional basketball wisdom, the team is highly flawed and "anybody can see" their weaknesses and the kind of player move they need to make to be better. That's not the typical reaction to the team with the best record in the league, which usually gets the 'look at how all these pieces fit together so perfectly' type treatment. On one hand, it's probably true that it's gotten to where the NBA regular season just doesn't pressure a team enough and that conventional wisdom will rear its ugly head quickly in the playoffs. But OTOH, if they do some winning in the playoffs, we may have to look at the possibility that they represent something of a paradigm shift in how to win in the NBA.

If reports are to be believed, player salary costs for teams are reaching $40M/yr. The only way to cover that is more games.

Newsom seems to be on a bit of a popularity roll in CA recently. Just as discussion - I tend to think CA is not quite as progressive as people in other parts of the country think. There is a lot of upper middle class suburbia in CA and those people are never really that far from a low tax GOP that could bring itself back to sanity. Plus, as Trump was able to leverage in FLA for example, the Hispanic population is not as liberal on social issues as progressives are either, but of course for the time being the GOP has now totally poisoned the well with whatever support Trump got from them in 2024.. But still, if you take immigration/racism off the table in a post Trump GOP (of course not likely but just spitballing here) that's another population that's not just going to fall in line lockstep with a strongly progressive Dem party. So bottom line, I won't be surprised to see a lot of intraparty sparks fly if (when!) Newsom decides he's running in '28. Personally, I have trouble trusting guys with perfect hair (Clinton, Newsom, Romney, Trump all qualify there)

Yeah - There might have been enough voter sentiment to get a third party going at that point but Ross wasn't really interested in building a movement, he just wanted to be President. I tend to think if a new party takes hold - probably eventually displacing one of the main ones, it will start local, become a established presence in a few states first, then organize nationally once they have an established constituency. I don't see the likelihood of a viable new party coming out of independent Presidential bids.

I'll be curious to see where they play him and how many places they play him in ST.