gunnarthor

Kiriloff has a higher obp than I thought he had for all his struggles. That's a pretty good sign.

Both Cleveland and Chicago had more all stars than us? That's surprising.

I'd trade for Thor and I would include one of Lewis/Kiriloff but not both. But that might be enough. He's got lots of cheap years of control left so they'll want a Sale like return. Which they won't get but if I was them, I'd start by asking for Lewis, Kiriloff, Rortvedt and Dhuran or such. I'm not sure the Twins would feel comfortable making such a big 'win-now' trade. Also think the Twins should also focus on talented pitchers who have lost their shine but that the Twins might be able to fix - Dylan Bundy is #1 on that list for me.

I wanted Wright, didn't want McKay. Was happy with Lewis. I do hope McKay can play both ways though because I think baseball is more exciting with those sort of unique players.

Yep, this is a really bad Supreme Court. Some of my legal friends and I were talking about the justices in general. There have been about 113 or so justices. So if were to rank all 113 only possibly Sotomeyer from the current court would crack the top 25% in the courts history. Right now the court has a lot of Van Devanter's on it, guys who hung around a long time but didn't really have much influence on future legal thinking. While the court has turned rightward, it's generally seen as the result of a political change rather than a judicial one with most of that credit going toward outside groups like the Federalist society pushing their judges onto the judiciary. We don't have original thinkers like Stevens, Kennedy and even Rehnquist.

Not sure how you could suggest racism and xenophobia are not part of the GOP platform or this isn't Trump's flagship issue. Both of those statements are true. And both the Dems and GOP deserve condemnation for things they've done - either as bad policy or refusal to change policy.* But the current administration are purposefully making evil choices. Violating the Flores decision, closing legal ports of entry, jailing asylum seekers, etc. Those are active choices that are simply evil. Those are choices other administrations (both Dem and GOP) chose not to do. Hell, Bush after 9/11 wasn't as vindictive as Trump has been. You say you don't want an open boarder but why not? And what does that mean to you? For most of our history, we did have an open boarder. Ellis Island turned away less than 1% of immigrants. About 100 years ago we started passing laws that limited who could come based on their race. Does that sound like a good idea? Does an open boarder scare you because we don't know who would enter? Do we think immigrants aren't good for local economies? Do we not want people to enter because they follow a different religion? Or do you just think America can't absorb a large influx of immigrants? I don't actually like the idea of an "open boarder" in part because no one really knows what that means. Is it a more open immigration policy? I think people assume it simply means defenseless boarders and are afraid those darn Canadians will invade us for our cheap medical services. * Seriously, if you dig, you'll find posts from me in 2011-2012 about how bad the Obama administration was dealing with children coming to the boarder.

This x1000. He could have won, he could have made Texas competitive again. Him not running for Senate is going to be the big What If of 2020, I think.

One of the reasons I posted this thread was because immigrant rights are in the cross-hairs. The current GOP is extremely hostile to immigrants. They've fanned flames of xenophobia and racism to win votes. They've tried to scare the more gullible among us that immigrants harm our economies or cause crime. It's ugly and those people should be ashamed. If there's an afterlife they should be forced to answer for those sins. I also posted this because Angie Valeria was a little girl who died senselessly and we should all have had a moment where we felt ill that this young girl died. If you didn't, you might want to consider why. We shouldn't ignore the policies of our elected officials and how they impact people and we should put a face to these policies. But mostly, I posted this because people should know who Angie was.

She was a brave little girl. She deserves to be remembered. Whataboutism is not really helpful

Next month she would have turned two years old. She jumped back into the river to try and save her father. Since we've closed ports of entry, asylum seekers are being forced to make more dangerous crossings. A few years ago, Europe was shamed by the drowning death of another child refugee from Syria, Aylan Kurdi. The way we're treating immigrants now, I'm not sure America can feel shame anymore. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/26/politics/mexico-father-daughter-dead-rio-grande-wednesday/index.html

You posted a thread stating that Warren wanted gay reparations at a time when reparation over slavery were on the front page of most news services. You knew that you were suggesting that slavery and treatment of homosexuals were the same and suggested that was being pushed by a major candidate of a political party you oppose. After numerous people pointed out how Warren said nothing of the kind, you googled your phrase and found an op-ed published in the NY Times that spoke about gay reparations for criminal convictions of gay men in other countries. That article had nothing to do with Warren or her tax plan and didn't mention either. So your first post - Warren wants reparations for gays - is not supported by anything you've posted nor have you found any post that uses that term in relation to Warren. Others have correctly found that you got that term from far right websites that aren't worth reading. So, to sum up. You posted some provocative BS. You were called out on it. You then lied about where you found the term. You blamed others for being sensitive while LYING to them and denying the truth.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/20/sen-elizabeth-warren-floats-law-to-speed-same-sex-couple-tax-refunds.html The proposed law would allow married same-sex couples to amend their tax returns for the years where the government refused to recognize their rights. Married couples had to file as single despite being married. That could have significant impact on a tax return. The IRS permitted people to amend their taxes for three years, which doesn't cover all of the years the govt didn't recognize same sex marriages. This bill, which has sponsers in the house as well, would extend the period to amend to when your state recongized your marriage. I didn't march in the pride parade this year but I have many times and it always bothered me how many basic rights same sex couples were denied. Frankly, this seems like a good bill.

I tend to agree more with Mike on the topics in this thread. Don't overly worry about market up and downs and hold for the longterm, don't daytrade. I personally love large dividend stocks although it does impact your taxes at the end of the year. But if you can afford it, dividend reinvestment can really build up a stock in your portfolio. We've added over 300 shares of WFC over the years just through reinvestment. That adds up. Trust companies that are well run/strong moats or in industries that are required/needed. Put some money in index funds. Make sure you max out your companies 401k and have an IRA that you contribute to to the max before you put money elsewhere. We've had some luck on some smaller companies - Shopify, Roku, Helmrich Payne. But we've never gone all-in on those type of buys. Probably not a good idea but man, I wish I had bought more Shopify.

I wasn't impressed with him earlier but looks like he might have turned a corner. Really good sign if he did. Good for him in putting in the work.

https://www.investors.com/news/technology/chewy-com-ipo-price-range-raised-before-trading-date/?src=A00220&yptr=yahoo

And while we're giving kudos to the manager, it's probably good to note that the players are doing the work. I really like this team, it's fun to watch.

Are you arguing that the Tigers are underachieving? There's no talent there at all. They are actually 4 games better than their pyth w/l record. Not sure you can blame that mess on Gardy et al. Frankly, I was sorta impressed on how tough the Tigers played us as opposed to how the Sox and Baltimore merely rolled over. As to Rocco over Molitor, it's not even close. I thought Molitor was a bad fit for this team and the FO seems to have figured that out.

He was surging up the draft boards though.

I'm not sure that's true. Balazovic and Arraez have probably already moved Enlow out of the top 10. And maybe more than one pick from this year could figure into our top 10. I wouldn't be surprised if Lewis and Rooker are the only 2017 picks on our top 10 in a month or so. But Lewis is a heck of a get and he makes our farm system pretty strong. I think the criticism I have with our system right now is that it's deep but not really tall, if that makes sense. We have a ton of players who could become solid MLers, which is great. We don't have that many who could become better than solid. And this recent draft seemed to add a bunch of future solid players but lacks that upside.

I like this answer and I agree with most of it. I do think that we have to wait on results but some of our recent drafts have looked pretty good and I'm hoping that the FO finds more Polancos, Keplers and Berrios in the future.

Yeah, I said as much. Was wondering where he was finding his optimism on those drafts.

Why is that? I'm not necessarily disagreeing but the new FO has had three drafts now and two trade deadlines and have managed only one top 100 prospect (Lewis). The 2017 draft doesn't stand up well just a couple years out. It's way too early to make any judgments but i'm wondering where your optimism is coming from.

Just for the record, as a kid we grew up on a small pig farm that managed to make a small profit because we could sell our pigs to the St Paul stockyard. In the 90s, a lot of forces combined and closed down the stockyard so unless you were big enough to sell pigs directly to a processor (which meant you had to sign a contract to deliver X number of pigs a month) you had to go into the farmer's market business or close. Lots of small farms ended with the stockyard. I'm not sure if you'd want to categorize the stockyard as a subsidy or a cooperative but it was vital to small farmers for quite some time. When we talk about rural problems, I don't think that one is mentioned enough.

I agree. I think we'll see a handful of promotions after the minor league all-star break and he could be one. I'm sure Diaz will move up as well.