LCHorn

Yikes! I think the only free agent I wanted to make a run at that would’ve helped the team was Eovaldi and he’s due for some regression. To @Wulaw Horn’s point, the main issue going forward is we don’t have depth to replace an Abreu or LMJ so it’s not about the total budget or cap, it’s that we lost WAR and haven’t replaced it elsewhere

I actually do hope he goes to the Dodgers or Yankees. He’s about to be the most expensive player in baseball and what I see is a player who’s twice as likely to be injured.

Do you have sources? Because that reads like Kelly Iko’s “let’s talk trade scenarios with other beat writers” in the Athletic and those deals all sounded terrible if you’re a Rockets fan.

I don’t want to jinx it but I also expect tomorrow to reverse the gains once the Freedom Caucus floods the media with insurrectionist drivel.

Abreu hitting a homer plus Paxton getting impeached is a very weird parlay for the weekend.

Bannon is hot garbage; considering him a depth piece is being generous.

I’m getting those same texts. Clearly my choice to vote in the GOP primary so I could have the satisfaction of voting against Cruz twice came back to bite me.

I bought the baller, fully tricked out Aeron from Herman Miller during one of their 10% off sales after looking at the Austin resale market, including TOPS and Craigslist, and determining that the secondary value was probably 60%-70% of new retail. In other words, it’s a big upfront cost but if you end up using it for three years it probably ends $.25 a day or less if you keep it longer and in good shape.

Hah! True story, first time I heard that one was from our Methodist pastor but it was about Baptists. Another one he told was “how can you tell a Baptist from a Catholic?” ”A Catholic will say ‘hello’ to you at the liquor store.”

I'll say this for Talarico, who I expect to get primaried by a Hispanic once his constituents realize he's Italian and not Mexican, but he has the BEST hairpiece of anyone in the Texas House.

All I know is that, as a life long Methodist reared in Baptist country, the mere fact that a thread on us would reach 5 pages in length is something of a miracle, praise Jesus!

I only ever click this thread with trepidation but I'm glad to see good news.

I just presumed all the Harden to Houston smoke is posturing for a Sixers contract extension.

I’d rather respond quickly rather than research and provide citations, but I’ve read plenty on #2 that argues that’s bad tactics with the Dems. As a group they just don’t respond to fear based political messaging in the way that righties do. It’s unfortunate that the GOP elites have just nailed it when it comes to creating a platform that keeps their core constituents highly engaged. We can argue that the Dems need to play rougher on the margins but let’s be honest, the failure on the Dem side isn’t because of messaging, it’s because they are just fucking terrible at playing the long game. The small, subtle surrender in the rural areas begat state house losses. The attempt to mollify their most socially progressive members alienated center right seniors, further compounding the loss in the rural areas and sparsely populated states and they keep pounding the table yelling “demographics will save us!” while the GOP knee caps them on voting rights. If you want to turn that around, you don’t do it by becoming opposite to Republicans but more righteous, you figure out how to win marginal elections in swing districts, groom state candidates that offer more than membership in a minority group, and grass roots the shit out of everything. It’s labor intensive and expensive but unfortunately your voters don’t drink Fox-style Koolaid and you’ll have to actually work for their vote.

Who exactly is the audience for this, though? Do you think MAGA folks are shamed by the criticism? Do you think the center-right Republicans who only want to preserve their economic might cringe at being called fascist? What about the so-called “Christian” conservatives who agree little with the other two groups but have eaten heavily from a table that glorifies traditional gender roles, traditional marriage, and has been told that LGBT abortionists are the source of all their problems. To them zealot is a compliment. And on the left, do you think they are somehow in the dark about the basket of deplorable making up today’s GOP? Will publicly calling out the other side in the manner you describe excite them enough to vote for someone less charismatic than a once in a generation candidate like Obama? I mean this sincerely as an inquiry into political tactics; who is the audience? What is the objective of calling them out? If it moves neither side then what purpose does it serve?

I guess I'm in the rotten tomato critic category because I was so underwhelmed. I don't really care about rotten special effects (and Modok looked terrible) but that script needed A LOT of work. There is zero tension, repeated logical inconsistency, and it's just a really bad version of an Ant-Man movie in keeping thematically with the previous two. You could substitute pretty much any other hero for Ant Man and tell basically the same story. Can someone tell me what the Wasp does? I don't mean power set, I mean why they need her narratively? She's in the title but you could easily write around her absence. I can't recall if Rudd and Lily had chemistry in the previous films but here it's entirely absent and they just wrote nothing to justify any connection there. When they tell each other "I love you" at a key moment it comes out of nowhere because I think it's the first time they've spoken to each other the whole film. The only purpose of the movie is to showcase Majors issuing cryptic platitudes in a low register and he's terrific at it. They should have just called it "Kang the Quantum Conqueror" if they wanted to build up an origin story. Not a single character that we're meant to root for is changed at all between the beginning of the film and the end.

What’s the address? Also, pics of sis might help.

Babers isn't going anywhere--that dude is a Triple A lifer.

I bet clutchfans is melting down. I guess there’s some karmic justice in a well run org like the Spurs winning the lottery and the hapless Rockets relegated to perpetual mediocrity. At least we’re skipping the handwringing to come if Wemby’s feet don’t hold up.

This, in fact I think Derka’s list is too long. I would probably just have Kindle, Roy, and Robison on there, maybe Shaun Rodgers. “Freak” to me means their athletic potential is so high that they periodically do something so amazing you wonder why they don’t it more often.

Slayton looks like a stress eater.

You had me at he can play 1st.

Whoever coined “ladybug” for Lindsay Graham deserves applause and it’s probably in line with kitty cat as an insult.

So I've decided to do this on my own after using Protax for years. My wife works for Google and one of her colleagues built this for generating values: Protesting Property Taxes I'm a mortgage lender and have reviewed thousands of appraisals so I'm at least informed enough to get myself in trouble. That said, the report they've (on that website) provided is pretty interesting and at this point I'd recommend it (I'm protesting values on three properties and if lose any of these it'll be the last time I'm so foolhardy). At least on our primary they included sales comps going back 12 months and appeared to highly prioritize proximity over transaction age. That said, I'd really like to see the CAD's evidence in rebuttal because I really think they just threw a dart at wall.

I thought about including this in my response to CTJ, but I'm actually a little more optimistic than him that Manning doesn't immediately transfer if he's behind Murphy in the fall of '24. That said, I don't think he's going to be advised to back-up Murphy more than a year and that's the best case scenario if he's not named the starter (in other words, if Murphy is first string but not a great NFL candidate and wants to return for the 2025 season I would agree that Manning is gone). Bear in mind this is a little tea leaf reading but also sourced from personal networks unrelated to football so maybe a little differently sourced than what might come from the coaching underground/recruiting websites. From what I've been told, he's not David Ash but Manning very much wants the experience of being a college student at Texas specifically and if football wasn't a consideration he'd probably still have chosen to come here for undergrad.