Brock Beauchamp

No, I'm not endorsing your point, I'm showing the hypocrisy of "systemic racism doesn't exist" and "Democrats instituted systemic racism in the 90s" coming from the mouth of the same person within a 24 hour period. Besides, it's irrelevant to me. I effing HATE Bill Clinton. Always have, probably always will. You're more interested in making this a partisan argument because that's easy for you to get around. Well, guess what? Some of us have little use for the Democratic Party as a whole. Levi and I fall under that umbrella. Pseudo hates corporate Democrats more than any of us, probably. So attacking individual Democrats none of us have much interest in defending isn't a useful point because you're just trying to deflect the conversation into partisan nonsense and it's not even recent partisan nonsense because you're digging back two and a half decades to get there.

You should try arguing honestly some time. Because you're screaming about a point no one has defended, yet didn't respond to me turning your own Clinton statement against you regarding systemic racism. But hey, fake righteous indignation sure is easier than defending opposing points you made all by yourself.

When it's used as a response to quiet "Black Lives Matter", which was literally the purpose of the creation of the phrase "All Lives Matter". Context is important. Not a single person said "All Lives Matter" until it could be used as a rebuttal for uppity black people who had the audacity to say they matter, too.

Dude, you're joking, right? Not 25 posts ago, you typed this: "You should be aware that Clinton's violent crime bill in 1994 helped to target blacks and is a big reason for the mass incarceration of them."

Yet not a single goddamned person on the planet bothered to say "All Lives Matter" until someone had the audacity to say "Black Lives Matter". So, no, your claim "All Lives Matter" rings pretty hollow to me.

I have the exact same issues. Though they’re more speculative issues than anything else. I need to know more specifics about how it all works.

Fantastic software, know nothing of their ability to monetize on scale but I’m skeptical of it being a profit beast. Their scope is pretty niche the same way I’d be skeptical of Skype being an independently traded company.

Agreed with the second paragraph. I want to see Castro stick around as a mentor, not necessarily as a guy who catches 100+ games a season. First paragraph gets a bit stickier. This pitching staff is not awesome while the offense profiles to be quite good. Given those splits, I'll happily sacrifice a little offense to help what is probably, at best, a mediocre staff look as good as it can.

As am I. But you're the one who said it was a big assumption that Castro isn't better than Garver without any evidence to support that statement. I was a big advocate for Garver to get playing time last season but he needs to improve defensively if he's going to supplant Castro.

A partial year, which was pretty awful defensively (which is what caused the partial year in the first place). According to BP's framing runs, he was ninth worst in MLB last season, despite starting only 75 games. https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=2560704 In their overall catcher metric, Fielding Runs Above Average, he was eighth worst in MLB last season. https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=2575471 It should be noted that Castro, despite starting just 19 games last season, managed to post the 29th best FRAA metric in baseball. https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=2557144

I don't dislike the lack of a touchscreen; if anything, I prefer it. Mazda put the display on the dash to increase visibility while driving and reduce eye focus time. As a result, the display is awkwardly placed for touchscreen use. I find the control knob to be quite good and use the favorites button to jump to the desired radio station. Really, most of my problems with the system boil down to its lack of Carplay and Android Auto. Not in love with Mazda charging so much to retrofit the system but that's because they cheaped out on USB ports. Carplay requires a higher voltage port than Mazda puts in most of their vehicles. Overall, considering how upscale Mazda's interiors are to the competition, it's a sacrifice I understand, even if I don't care for it. To keep a price point, they needed to skimp somewhere.

It feels like you're intentionally missing my point but I'll break it down to be more clear: 1. This conversation originally started by talking about the wealthy, not wealth. Most people have wealth. Few are wealthy. In fact, just last page I questioned the intelligence of taxing wealth instead of income. That should have made my stance on the subject pretty clear. 2. Saying "loss of wealth caused the Great Depression" is akin to blaming gunpowder for a firearm death. While technically true, it requires ignoring/diminishing that the gunpowder was packed into a bullet, which was loaded into a gun, whose trigger was pulled by a human being. No one says "If only we had done something about gunpowder, little Billy would be alive today!" 3. Knowing the posters on this board as I do, no one is saying that if you inherit a $200,000 house, the government should just seize it or take 90% of the value. That's absurd. There's a massive grey area between "take virtually nothing" and "take virtually everything". 4. Loss of inherited wealth is a terrible comparison to loss of wealth, which is the crux of your Great Depression point, I think. If someone steals my bank account information, takes $50k from it, and then lights the cash on fire, that's a complete and total loss of wealth (which is basically the Great Depression but we shouldn't ignore that mess was largely caused by irresponsible banking practices, mostly driven by the super-wealthy). If my father dies, I receive $50k in inheritance, and the government takes all $50k (again, no one is arguing this), the wealth is not lost. It is distributed. The money exists, it simply is not mine... but, more to the point, it was never mine in the first place. It was my father's money. While I might lament not receiving $50k, it does not meaningfully impact my life, as I never had it in the first place. Redistribution of a dead person's wealth isn't even in the same ballpark as loss of wealth on a societal scale.

I haven’t gotten around to the CarPlay update yet but plan to do it at some point.

I'm 6'3". If someone reclines a seat in front of me, it's only fair I should get to throat-punch them when the flight is complete. Tit for tat. Also, which is what *really* gets me is that the vast majority of the time it happens to me (like 80-90%), the person doing it is WELL under six feet tall. Hey short people, go **** yourselves. Keep your damned seats upright. You don't even need the space.

Flew Icelandic a couple of times to Europe. Highly recommend, though ALWAYS stopping in Reykjavik is kind of a nuisance but hardly a deal-breaker from Minnesota.

I'm pretty sure I remember seeing this on Facebook. Woof. In the future when purchasing used, it's hard to beat a Toyota product. It's a big reason why we bought a used 2010 Prius a couple of years ago. Under $8k, 130k on the clock, and not a lick of problems past wear parts (got nailed with needing to replace the entire rear brake assembly because I didn't realize it was worn when I bought the car). By and large, driving a Toyota is about as stimulating as watching a washing machine operate but damn, the things go almost forever (out of the top ten most reliable cars sold, about half are Toyota products). When we replace the Prius, I suspect we'll avoid Toyota but that's because we'll buy newer and I actually like to drive, a feeling the Prius tries to suck out of me every time I get behind the wheel of it. But if you just want Point A-to-B, can't beat 'em.

I absolutely agree with this in 2019 and believe that concept was a driving force behind the Baldelli hire. But in 2018 and under Molitor, I don't think things were quite that fluid. There seemed to be something of a wall between the concepts the front office were pushing and what Molitor was doing on the field. Not an enormous rift or anything, just a little more resistance than should probably exist in a modern baseball organization.

Like I said, I don't really get the Astudillo decision but I suspect it was done because he was an unknown to the organization. Still, it doesn't make sense to acquire that player and never put him behind the dish in a game during his first stint with the team. You'd think they would have worked him in a few times just to see what they have. Anyway, once they got a look at him in Rochester for ~5 weeks, he came back up and started almost all of his games behind the plate. But also, let's remember that the front office and manager weren't exactly on the same page in 2018. Hard to say who made what decision and why.

Well, on June 15, the Twins were still only 5.0 games out of the division. On June 1st, they were 5.5 games out of the division so everyone was keeping basically the same pace for a few weeks in June. It wasn't cut and dry by any means. Also, around the middle of June, Garver began starting roughly half the team's games behind the dish so the front office was clearly moving in that direction as the season progressed.

Oh, now I see. Yay, corporate democrats. In some ways, it’s good to see stuff like this occasionally because it reminds me how the Democrats are also soulless sellouts.

Wait, what? Why?

Literally everyone who didn’t save their piggy bank money from childhood feels this way. Don’t worry about it. You’re way ahead of most other Americans in this regard. Like you, I spent some time living WAY under my means in my early 30s (my now-wife and I in a studio apt for a year despite both of us having good jobs). Both cars paid off, little debt past the $550/mo in rent. In that year, the two of us saved about $20k, which we turned into a house.

I don’t get the Astudillo decision last year but Garver was truly awful the first half of the season when the Twins were still fringe contenders. I don’t fault them in the slightest for not throwing away the most important defensive position on the field in May.

Your Jump to Conclusions mat is broken, LaBombo. Family wealth being taxed through generational inheritance isn’t even in the same ballpark as what caused the Great Depression (a speculative market collapsing on itself, followed by environmental disaster largely caused by unfettered capitalism with no land management practices). Economic mobility is an important part of a functioning economy. It maintains balance, is relatively stable and violence-free, and everyone gets to participate with an end goal in sight. Some will get there, some will not, but everyone got their shot. But the Gilded Age, Redux we've entered since 1980 is very bad for a democracy in the long term. We either end up in economic disaster, we drift toward authoritarianism and scapegoating of marginalized groups, or we start building guillotines in town squares. Hey, if we're really lucky, maybe we can go for the trifecta! Concentrated, generational wealth that results in loss of economic mobility for others is bad for business. We literally have a couple of thousands of years of evidence backing up the idea.

White *people* have exploited and sold black people down the road historically. Party hasn’t played much of a role, barring a few twitches of decency now and again (from both parties, mind you). But today, only one party is saying “black lives matter”. Say what you want about historical awfulness but I care more about today than 25 years ago.