SectionC3

West Virginia is now a red state. FYI.

I always knew that Jesus is not your true king.

He’s also not in town, as far as I know. FWIW.

Probably not, based on my comings and goings in OP and noticing who is not at home. I can say that one high end starter — who I have seen a bit during the off-season — did not appear to be in town as of this morning. (Don’t ask; I’m not outing the person.)

Agreed completely.

Maybe trump should stop taxing the middle class with his stupid tariffs. That’s one way to get the house in order.

Deadlines are magnets! Also, on a serious point, these tariffs and the approach to them are so friggin dumb. If the tariffs are so critical, then why pause them? And why, through the pause, give our competitors time to reorient and direct trade away from us? It's hard to fathom that someone could be so stupid as to approach this issue in this way. MAGA has nothing. There is literally nothing good about this.

Give me a break. They’re birds of the same feather. Both actions contributed to inflation. Pent up demand low supply and free money yields inflation.

But Trump tells the truth. Or Alex jones. Or Lara Loomer. You just believe what you want to believe. That’s it.

I’m open to that. Kind of like last year. Except this year we take the right player with the first pick and someone capable of contributing with the third round pick.

I feel like I grew up there too. I look at the place nearly every day. It's going to be very weird to not have it there anymore. I'm going to miss the memories.

That's a non sequitur. That aside, define "security of living."

That's the fallacy. Nobody's going to give them anything. They have to take it. Maybe they should aspire to more and to earn better. But maybe organization helps them get fair value. Which is where unions come in. And, why not support unskilled labor banding together? Especially if you're worried about the exploitation of labor overseas. In the end, with respect to domestic labor unions, what's the difference to you? Rising tides raise all boats. It's not a regulation. It's a tax. Tariffs can be good to protect industries from dumping. Steel is a good example of that. Placing tariffs on disposable crap, like what Trump is doing, is not.

This realtor has a bunch of properties listed by the stadium that aren't moving. She aims high. I'm skeptical the house sells at that price, but it's no skin off my nose either way. I hope there are happy buyers and sellers once that house closes.

Douglas has a far a better chance of doing that than does white.

He's going to make the country "leftist" when this foolish tariff gambit fails. A third way Democract should win in 2028. But it won't be a Bill Clinton third way. It's going to be a new third way--new blood, new economic ideas, etc. Get ready for AOC/Bernie. (I'm not saying I'll vote for AOC, or for Bernie, in a primary. I believe in capitalism, and ruggedness, as well as equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome. But I will damn sure vote for them with bells on in a general if they're running again Ted Cruz, JD, or a different Trump acolyte.)

Ask yourself this - why do companies like WalMart and Amazon work so hard to keep unions out? It's because unions are good for workers and bad for owners. Unions are why we have benefits, and higher wages, and labor protections for the working class. Meanwhile, at Amazon, we have workers enduring "super shifts" or whatever they're called delivering packages from 10a to 10p four days a week. The conditions are horrible. They're no better at WalMart, where people are "surviving" on $12/hour and mollifying themselves into obesity with processed food and other salves designed to make their crappy lives a little less intolerable. Those companies are awful for labor. And this is coming from a guy who is a huge investor in Amazon. I acknowledge it makes me a little hypocritical. But that company can still make gobs of money even if it treats its employees better, which it should.

How do you measure trade deficits? And, are trade deficits with a given country always a bad thing? What I don't believe is measured in the trade deficit calculus employed by the Trump administration is the export of services. I'd rather have us exporting services--educating our populous to do smart things, like engineering, for example--than making socks and ball point pens. Let the Chinese and other countries do the menial stuff, and let's get our population trained up to do the more valuable things while they waste their time making our disposable junk. And, if you're so concerned about helping the biggest threat to our country, maybe, just maybe, the group of idiots in charge in the White House shouldn't be alienating our allies and pushing them into the embrace of that enemy.

Looks like they studied well at Trump University. Maybe they were taking lessons from us on our treatment of the 1921 Tulsa massacre, too. I find most interesting your point about the exploitation of labor. I agree that it happens, and that we (the American consumer) benefit from it. Nobody domestically has ever cared about that issue until now. And I find it hard to believe that those who care about the issue do so legitimately, and are willing to endure the pain of what effectively is Trump's new national sales tax, to change wages and conditions in a distant land with a vastly different economy and value per hour of labor. Even assuming that's the case, the next question would be whether these newfound domestic supporters of labor fairness feel the same about labor unions, and wages at WalMart (where many of them undoubtedly shop), and wages and conditions at Amazon (where many of them undoubtedly shop as well). I'm going to guess the answer to the WalMart/Amazon issues is no, and that these points about exploitation of labor are made simply to justify support for the moronic new tariff taxes that the Trump II administration has imposed.

The more I think about it, the more it's not a completely unreasonable number. Shakir got $15m, with 2024 stats of 102 "targets" (here, actual targets and two carries), 8.2 yards of production per target, four TDs, a long of 52, and 35 first downs. Cook, in comparison, had 245 "targets" (same metric as Shakir), 5.2 yards of production per target, 18TDs, a long of 65, and 62 first downs. He's not as efficient as Shakir, but it's hard to argue that he doesn't produce well. And, I appreciate that some will say that it's easier to produce from RB than it is from the slot. Agreed, and Shakir should make more than Cook. But there's an argument that Cook is worth fairly close to what Shakir is getting, perhaps on a shorter deal. Even based on efficiency only, he's a $10m player gauged against Shakir's contract. (He's about 65% as efficient as Shakir.) I appreciate that he vultures a lot of TDs and FDs, but those numbers, as well as the explosiveness, are what they are, and there's a legitimate argument for paying him more than $10m based on those factors. I don't think it gets him to $15m, but I don't think it's outlandish to say that $12m would be a fair number.

In other marginally related news, Von Miller’s house popped up on a Zillow notification as I was reading this thread.

Liquidity lockup. Look at bond yields. Out debt is not attractive. It’s like the plumbing of the economy. Who buys this stuff? China. Japan. Europe. All the people were pissing off. I have no desire to relive 2008. We can’t afford it. But this fool and his tariffs (for what purpose again?) have us headed precisely in that direction.

But does it matter? The country was doing well when he left. Maybe not perfect, but well. And now, it's arguably days from veritable economic disaster. Maybe, just maybe, we should stop worrying about old news and begin to have a *little* concern about the ability and wherewithal of the fool who is driving this country toward an economic abyss.

We disagree. Airports in the Revolutionary War? Tariffing penguins? Thinking Venezuela is a person? This guy has watery eggs for brains.