TheLeviathan

Right, it's in the title right there for everyone. If you walked away from this convinced he is innocent and that's the takeaway you missed the larger, more important, issue.

That was a really well written article. Loved the Perry Mason history lesson on the front end too, never knew all of that.

I agree about the garage, but if your contention is that Dasseys confession was nothing but the cops leading him on.....then you are putting WAY too much stock into the documentary's version without taking in the whole picture.

Look, if you want to argue that Dassey has a barely functioning human brain and may have admitted to things he didn't do...sure, that's possible. But his initial confession - the first one - had way too many intimate details about the crime to be fantasy. I think what appeared to be coercion in the other videos (which is what I thought on first viewing) was really just trying to figure out why he was changing his story and the kid is too slow to keep up with what they are asking without them being explicit. At least that's my sense of it after watching the whole thing.

I don't know if he was a "bad guy" but he was certainly doing things to Theresa Halbach that made her think he was. It could be that he's just too dumb to know how he came across to her, but the truth is that she was actively avoiding him and he was actively pursuing more encounters with her. It's also not mutually exclusive to think that Avery is both guilty and the cops are a bunch of s***-heads who belong in jail too. Clearly the group from his original prosecution should've had much tougher consequences. These couple of cops that continued to be involved are also very fishy and may well have set up some evidence to put him away. But again, none of that rules out the possibility that he actually is guilty. As Brock said, the case for him being the murder at least makes some sense. The case against him sounds like a fantasy. A giant police coverup carried out by dozens of complicit people is a pretty hard pill to swallow. Alternative theories are based on wild speculation on snippets of video rather than anything meaningful. As for the confession, I again point you to the first interview (the one that happened four days prior to the short snippet they showed in the documentary) - in that interview Dassey is very clearly forthcoming. He should've always had counsel with him, that's a fair criticism, but the police didn't lead him along at all in that interview. And he knew a lot of details from the crime scene that were not public. He was clearly involved, whether he lied at some point or not is hard to say. But it wasn't through police pressure in that interview. I agree with Brock, people are taking this way too seriously as an unbiased documentary. The very title suggests it's anything but that. And that's fine, what they are actually getting at (police corruption and the rigged nature of the system) is super important stuff.

Yes, he was bring lead...after he had already demonstrated he took part in the murders without them leading him along much at all. It's possible got him to have both made a true confession and been manipulated by officers. The documentary only showed the most blatant manipulation and that's fine, it wasn't interested in presenting the full case just highlight police misconduct.

I think the way the documentary presented Bobby Dassey's testimony alone is reason enough to doubt this documentary should be taken as a serious presentation of facts. The full transcript and video of his testimony is not at all well represented in this documentary. When I watched it on the documentary I couldn't help but think the police were using some poor, incredibly stupid kid to their advantage. When you watch the whole thing you can see that what they're trying to do is get an incredibly stupid kid to be as forthcoming as possible if he wants to make a plea bargain and testify against Avery to save himself. He had already proven to them that he had been involved, from that point it was clarification. The documentary made it seem like putting words in his mouth when it really wasn't. Finding that full picture through this entire documentary into question for me.

Oh please, I'd love to see those polls. The idea that 40% of those polled in Iowa are Democrats infiltrating Republican primaries is a pretty outlandish claim.

I will say, Trump continuing to surge and dominate the Republican field is impressive. I'm no longer convinced he loses the national election. And like it or not, it's the Republican base that is fueling him along with some independents and tea party people.

If you're going by the documentary I think you would have a hard time doing that, but the documentary left out quite a bit. I think the most important thing it fails to talk about is all the contact he had with her prior to this and the uncomfortable feelings he gave her. He immediately becomes a key person of interest if she is literally asking her boss to send someone else to see him because he's harassing her. That makes me question his innocence as much as anything else.

Your expectations are just not realistic. The World Series champs had a .692 OPS backup IF. Hell, most teams didn't even manage to have starters post a .758 OPS. The guy hit in his limited playing time and has some versatility. I don't know what bar you are holding bench players to or why, but it seems really out of whack with reality.

Nunez is a perfectly acceptable bench player. The only thing I'd want to be different is that he'd hit left-handed so we could better take advantage of matchups with our righty-heavy lineup. Otherwise, Nunez is just fine. People seem to have forgotten some of the godawful players we've employed on our bench in the very recent past.

I wish we would've gotten in on relievers that weren't Bastardo. Part of the reason we have to contemplate signing a lemon is that we didn't do anything sooner.

In stadium I'm a huge fan of Tony O's

Yeah, lotteries have more than proven themselves useless at decreasing tanking.

I agree, don't give Plouffe up for nothing. But it seems to me it was never even explored or an option even on the table. Like it or not, his presence is part of the outfield problem.

The issue with my idea is that I think it's a pipedream that Plouffe gets traded. If Sano is in the outfield we end up with either a really crap option in CF (Rosario) or Arcia is on the outside looking in again. But something like Fowler-Dozier-Mauer-Sano-Arcia-Park-Rosario-Murphy-Escobar looks a lot better to me than swapping Fowler for Plouffe and having some hideous outfield configuration.

When young players take the next step or go through a season of growing pains is really hard to predict. I'm in a similar boat, anything give or take 75-85 is perfectly reasonable to me. Either side of that you get a bit more fringy to me.

Look, Santana and Arcia could bounce back - I'm actually all-in on giving Arcia that chance in fact. But you can't play Arcia and Sano in the outfield without trading a lot of defense for the hope of offense. Even more so if Buxton is better left to develop in AAA and you are playing either Sano-Santana-Arcia or Sano-Rosario-Arcia. If that doesn't make you cringe....well then I don't know what to tell you. Next, you don't have to trade anything but money for Fowler. Something the Twins still have plenty of, by the way. Adding him and trading Plouffe is a wash offensively, but Fowler would be a legit top of the order hitter and would allow the team to play Sano at third and leave the other corner spot for Arcia. Or, if Buxton is ready, then Fowler can play RF for a few months. But planning on Buxton, Sano, Arcia, Rosario, and Santana as the outfield looks like a disaster waiting to happen if there is any kind of stumble. And, as a group, is likely to be subpar defensively.

If people don't think 78 wins is a possibility for this team you may need to come back from the ledge a bit for your own sake.

The Browns were the only one I'd count as being a huge mistake, but even then they at least got to keep their name. Part of the blow of the North Stars move was having to rename ourselves the freaking "Wild"

The North Stars move took one of the best logos, names, and traditions in the sport and moved it. It was inexcusably stupid.

I fear the choices we make in March are going to all but assure that by July we are sellers. While depth is nice to have, it's better to actually field the best possible lineup you can from the get go. This team only contended because of how it played the first two months, putting a group of outfielders like Sano-Rosario-Arcia could be an outright disaster. And if they keep Buxton for defense alone then you are altering what you think is best for him as a hitter because of the corner you backed yourself into over the winter. Trade Plouffe and go sign Fowler to a one year deal. Bring up Buxton when he's ready and then move Fowler to the corner. Or call up Kepler. Or trade Fowler. Do whatever, but give yourself some real options rather than this cobbled mess.

Again, the biggest victims are the non-athlete students. Some of whom could give two craps about any of the athletics and yet fund them anyway.

Our society tolerates it because we like sports and tolerate just about anything with them. It doesn't matter what the sport is or what the issue is. To answer your first question - I'd say for something to be racism there should be some sort of either deliberate looking aside or deliberate intent. This is about greed, not racism.