gehringer_2

I think they might get something from Urquidy but otherwise agree. Disappointed Lange hasn't come around. Relief pitchers throw so few innings you never know if it's their good years or their bad years that are the outliers. Looking like with Lange it was the good year Or maybe he's just got permanent deficits from the injuries. I think sometimes we underestimate how much permanent damage these guys build up from their injuries. Maybe what did in Manning also.

No fear of that. This SCOTUS would happily reverse even Miranda to make sure the death of one of their stars is avenged.

If you think everyone is saying that you maybe you should parse the conversation a little more closely. But even if some are, can you blame them? If you were one of those people Charlie so cavalierly suggested be removed from the population how could you be blamed for being happy he's gone? Why was virtually every American glad to see Bin Laden gone? Because he had made himself our mortal enemy. Charlie made himself that for a lot of people.

interesting, But a hunter that buys another a 3rd gun doesn't really change the calculus of how many armed people are wandering around the streets or how many households where a gun becomes the end point of some stupid drunken argument or a suicide vector. As has been discussed before, we tend to debate the gun issue backwards in the US. The gun control issue always comes up after some kind of high profile assassination - but what gun control really does is make the streets safer - and reduce suicides. Under almost any reasonable gun control regime you can imagine, a Lee Harvey Oswald probably could still have obtained a rifle. That's not what you are going to stop. What you can get are safer streets, and at least a reduction in lethality of the mass shooters - for instance in '66 the Texas Tower shooter was able to kill 15 compared to the Vegas Shooter killing 60 in somewhat similar circumstances. Where the debate in the US always founders is that we let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Just because there may be nothing that can stop all gun deaths, doesn't mean we can't stop a lot of them. And despite what you quoted about Australia's possible backsliding, gun deaths still fell by something like 2/3 with the actions they took. And in the end, I just don't get it. If I knew I could save the life of some poor unknown person by going out my way just a little bit, or even to prove I was competent to own a weapon, I'd leap at the chance. I just don't understand American gun owners who would rather see people die than be inconvenienced a little. And so many profess to be Christian. How can they care so little for their fellow man?

this is one of the reasons that the right has such a need to devalue science, because guns are such a big piece of the right's theology and science absolutely proves that guns are a bad idea. So what do you do? You don't want to change your mind so you must deny the facts and the systems that produce the facts.

hard to have a polite conversation with a merchant of hate and intolerance.

Dickens actually already wrote this character once, but of course as fiction. But it's right out of 'A Christmas Carol' where Scrooge wants to see some "human feeling" over his death and the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Be shows him the chambermaid having a gay old time selling what she stripped from his bedroom as he lay there dead but still warm.

Life is complex, people are complex. What a person does that is good doesn't mean they can't be crazy. But seriously, that's exactly why what a guy like Kirk preaches is so terrible. The trans person I happen to know the best does more selfless good work out in the larger community than Charlie Kirk probably ever dreamed of doing in his life. He has(had) no right or standing at all to impugn that person's existence or their value.

Yankees were holding the door open, Tigers didn't walk through

Tigers sending too many minor league pitchers out against major league hitters right now.

best of all possible worlds for the US now would be for Trump to lose energy to where he no longer initiated much but keeps holding to power so close none of the crazies around him can take any initiatives either.

one of the deeper issues in the US is that an effective democracy has already broken down. Minorities are able to control the US government both because of the initial construction mistake in this union which has resulted in too many small populations having outsized voting power, then added to that has been the ability of that minority to cement its protected status via control the Supreme Court and its protection of Gerrymandering and campaign funding abuse. This leads to at least 2 results. The real majority of sane people tune out because they've already had too much experience seeing their votes not get results that they know 80% of the actual population favor (e.g. rational gun control), but also on the other side, it fosters a sense of desperation in the minority who should have lost power long ago, because they know their political power is tenuous and unjustified, so they constantly have to up the stakes to keep their people motivated and lie about the threats to the system. Yes -reform would threaten their control, it wouldn't threaten democracy. It's the status quo, which has not been functional democracy for a long time.

I won't be surprised if mortgages respond sluggishly - the spread between the 10yr and longer rates is unusually large right now. It will help if that also closes some.

can't help but make me think of this: what a different world.

I still wonder - so much of the discussion around the House settlement and all the changes is from the perspective of the top teams in the power conferences. Can a MAC team like Todedo or EMU play in that game at all without massive support from their school's general fund? I just haven't heard much about what kind of options exist for teams that can't blythely pony up $20M for player salaries.

this.

The bottom is falling out for young workers, even those with degrees, while the profits keep rolling in for the deal makers. It reflects a lot of what is wrong with the American economy and goes to the point about how we use numbers to judge our condition. GDP growth becomes especially meaningless as a socio/political useful objective when it's coming at the expense of half the population actually getting poorer.

Over/under on how many outlets report "Inflation last month rose at a 4.8% annual rate"?

300K is normally the level you don't want to see. Getting a bit close.

Apparently for Ford, even hindsight isn't 20/20....

Seems reasonable, but it's going to be confusing to sort out because you are still going to have all the schools left out of whatever becomes the new power league that are likely still going to play football. Does it all go Ivy league form with true amateurs again? Is that even possible? Can you imagine football as a club sport? Well, maybe flag. I guess I would need to read more than I am interested to but what does become of the teams/leagues like the Ivy league that have already opted out of the current system? Are they exempt from the House settlement terms?

Not a lot to go on here to judge the pension but I'll comment on ESSP. I had one for a number of years. Sounds like it was a similar deal, 15% discount on the stock price. That part is free money and means almost certainly worth taking. The down side of an ESPP is that it *can* be a lot of work on your taxes. It depends on how much of the accounting work your employer provides you with. In my case, it was zero and without that it will be a pain to track your gains for your tax returns. Plan on using a higher level version of TurboTax! When I was in the plan most of the time I spent on my taxes (including a full schedule A in those years) was spent on the ESPP. In the ESPP I was in, the actual internal stock purchase date was always the 1st day of the year but the award date was whenever the company decided - usually it was in the fall, so my taxable income from the plan was based 15% off on prices I had to go look up and track myself. The paper work they provided was the barest minimum. It was all stuff they could have provided but didn't. Once I set up a spreadsheet that tracked it all it wasn't too bad. My plan had no hold requirement, so I could sell the shares the day I got them if I didn't like where I thought their price was going and often as not I did. And if prices were rising, i could hold the shares till they converted to long term gains and get taxed at a lower rate. The 15% discount is always regular income though - so that's one way the accounting gets complicated. In any case, at least the 15% on the $$ I put in the pool was guaranteed if I didn't want to hold the stock so why turn that down?

Something about sowing the wind you say?

I'm not sure we have been a serious country since people voted for Kennedy instead of Nixon because his make-up was better.

that's exactly what I thought of.