Chisoxfn

What sucks for me is that todays game between France and Mexico pits two of the countries I root against the most up against each other. Mexico because they dive like little b****es and France because they are b****es.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 09:47 AM) BP is not the only one doing this, they have a bunch of people from all the other companies working on it, and the government has enlisted a bunch of people from other countries to help out. In 1979 it took 10 mos. to end the spill. This one is even deeper and worse. It appears relief wells are all that will stop it. Maybe we learned our lesson and the only law we'll pass after this won't be "Let's cap the pay the oil company would need to pay in case this ever happens again." Yes, now we have other resources available. My issue is why did it take so long. Obama turned down assistance 3 days into the damn thing. We could have been doing what we are doing now by day 10, isntead it took till day 35 to 40 because we reached the capability to clean up the oils that we have now. We also allowed BP to act independently and keep information private and secure for way too long. The reaction of our government was completely deplorable to this mess. Yes, BP f***ed up, but I can't ignore the fact that our federal government perpetuated this entire disaster in a big way. I also want to point out that the 1st relief well will probably fail. History shows that it typically takes a couple tries to get a relief well to work.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 09:45 AM) Yeah, people in the UK who seem to be personally offended by this, as if it was US vs UK, can go f*** themselves. No one is upset at the UK as a country, hell a lot of people probably think its an American company. They are upset at BP, not B. Well, I do think it is extreme for our country to tell a foreign country or begin speculation of what they can/can't do when it comes to dividends, etc. That really isn't our right, imo. However, outside of that I don't think Britain has any reason to get there panties in a bundle, outside of the fact that clearly them, just like many Americans (and New Jersey employees) have seen their retirement portfolio's take a significant hit due to the spill.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 09:34 AM) That's my point. TO be clear Jas, I completely agree that the US government's oversight of these operations, as well as the slow and inept response to the disaster, have been awful. They too displayed incompetence top-down. but make no mistake, BP caused this, and it wasn't just some aberrant event. It was the result of documented, systemic corporate culture that has gone decidedly down the wrong path. At this point, in addition to making BP pay for this huge mess, I want to see the US government do four things: 1. Begin debarment of BP from everything and anything they reasonably can (they can't do it all, certain areas are just too dependent on them). This will send a HUGE message to oil companies on the need to change their behavior. 2. Flush out and re-tool the MMS, replacing basically all top level people and anyone found to be complacent in these safety checks. 3. Suspend all NEW offshore drilling for quite a while, possibly permanently, but at least until the safety regulations and mechanisms can be cleaned up. 4. Come up with solid contigency and communication plans for future oil/gas disasters. Matt, I definitely don't have a problem with those things. I don't know if I'd jump to the conclusion that we shouldn't be drilling off-shore. I'd just make sure that we have the proper oversight to ensure that a disaster of this magnitude can be as preventable as possible. One thing that people aren't talking about is just how much freaking oil was here. This is a huge freaking oil find. I don't quite think anyone believed the well to be as big as it appears to be given the volumes that are pumping out. And I do think BP should be tried for what is going on here. Investigations clearly need to be made to see why this happened, what caused it, and if it is found out that BP was negligent (and it appears a lot of evidence is already out there that they acted unethically and improperly), I have zero problem bringing down our law on them. I also think it is important to consider how BP compares to the rest of the industry. Are they the only company acting this way and they just happened to be the ones caught? Or do the rest tend to run better from the safety standpoint? I don't know the answer, but my guess is the entire industry is relatively similar.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 09:29 AM) Well, we have terrible regulation for a variety of reasons. But you don't blame the effect for the cause. If BP wasn't a crappy company, they won't need such tight oversight. Government failed here, sure, but the root cause is still BP. Again, what came first, the chicken or the egg. In a capitalistic society, people are going to push the envelope to earn money and that is why oversight to an extent is necessary. Oversight in areas where the issues either impact national security, safety, etc, or when things are too big and will impact our very well being (see case of the banks....we were so close to going into Marshall Law 2 years ago and I don't think people quite realize just how close we were to complete and utter chaos). Did BP fail, yes. Did the Gov fail, yes. Whats the freaking point here? I'm not saying BP didn't fail. I am saying they have responded pretty well and haven't been "cheap" in there response. Now maybe there is a terrible tone from the top down and the company flat out ignores laws/safety regulations/etc. I have no idea. I don't know what 95% necessarily means. Sure it sounds pretty terrible, but that might only be 10 issues, the hell if I know. The severity of those issues, I don't know. Maybe you guys do, I don't know, but I'd assume most of that data isn't public knowledge. I do know that BP is handling claims pretty freaking well, is putting cash into the situation when it didn't necessarily have to and they seem to be responding well in many ways (not all...see how they kept the info so private at first). And I'd like to think when you have a situation go wrong, you look at the many causes/effects. Sarbanes Oxley caused us to have massive controls in place to prevent massive financial frauds like Enron from happening again. I think most of it is stupid, but there are some good things about Sox (and some bad), but one of the key things is to actually have oversight on those controls. Just cause you have controls, doesn't mean s*** if you aren't monitoring them and it would certainly appear that if BP was this safety disaster that you guys are claiming than the monitoring organization certainly f***ed the hell up too for not shutting them down.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 09:23 AM) First, financially successful and "good" are not the same. Not even close. Second, their safety record is abysmal and the emails detailing the design considerations of this well show a corporate culture of cutting corners to maximize profits. I linked to the document dumps a few pages ago. Third, this seems like you're supporting the idea of the fund instead of litigating it all like jenks wants. But maybe jenks just wants to get in on the case. All I am stating is that BP did not have to go this way. So I would say they seem to be willing to put the money out there. Now this is probably because they know they completely screwed up massively and really ignored the signs that would have prevented the explosion and tried to cover up the magnitude of the leak immediately following. Two terrible things and quite frankly, criminal things in my mind. Do I know that for a fact though, hell no. That is my pure speculation that they covered up the leak (and I'm sure if they did it was in a way that they had plenty of evidence to support there claims, the #'s they used just tended to be ones that were most in there favor and far less conservative).

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 09:23 AM) In the past few years, something like 95% of all the safety violations handed out to all oil companies by the US went to BP. So, yeah, the ARE a s***ty company, top-down. Well in that instance, why the hell didn't we walk away? Why did the US government continue to allow them to do this? Where were we to step in. That is pretty deplorable and to me I'd like to think we'd handle the safety issues hard-core. Again, I don't know what these 95% of violations were for and I don't know how they mediated the situations, etc. Are these violations handed out to particular sites (i.e., more off-shore than onshore, etc?). Does BP tend to do almost all in one area? I'm not an expert on oil safety and everything. I can state from a financial perspective BP has been a tremendous company. I can't comment on how they handle safety because quite frankly a lot of that information tends to remain and be handled internally until there is a major f-up. The same thing happens in the pharmaceutical business and I'm sure many other industries.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 08:48 AM) ahh, yes, we should wait for the courts to play this out, it only took the people affected by exxon mobile 20 years to get their pay. We should all make sure everyone get's f***ed over except BP. They are an amazing company because they are awesome and big and everyone is wrong except them, they should not be forced to do anything, they are competent, except to clean up the spill, the gov't should do that, the gov't should pay for it, WHY IS THE GOV'T MAKING BP PAY FOR IT..... WHY IS BP STILL CLEANING UP THEIR OWN MESS WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY The fact of the matter is a spill like this is bigger than BP. There is not perfect protocal or magical method to fix it. It is why you needed a bigger party involved ensuring that as many and every resource out there is handled, including the assistance of government resources. That thing is our government, who while they don't have the expertise, has the power to reach out and get other oil companies resources involved, other countries resources (boats, etc) involved and of course the finest engineers/researchers/etc involved. BP has done a lot wrong, but lets not act as if they are intentionally failing to clean this thing up. This is a really delicate situation that needs a s***load of attention and unfortunately is heavily a trial & error process.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 08:25 AM) No no no, we can rely on BP to do the honest and ethical thing. Their track record proves it. Technically, BP could have sat back, told the US gov to f*** off, and went to court. They didn't have to put down 20B of there own money in this mess. Sure they f***ed up and acted negligently and ignored warnings signs but just because something happened at one location in the entire world, doesn't necessarily mean BP is a crappy company and that upper management is full of dumbasses, etc. BP is a good, incredibly successful company that made a mistake.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Jun 16, 2010 -> 06:06 PM) Here's the problem and where the logic of many conservatives breaks down: Bailing out banks a banks mess to protect the economy from diving into a deep depression is bad because government should get involved. Bailing out an oil companies mess because it is polluting water and ruining an ecosystem is a a great idea and a role of the government. As a major conservative, I don't think it was bad to bail out the banks and I don't think it is bad to assist an oil company. The US government is responsible for this as well. For example, lets say I'm GM and I outsource something to another manufacturer to produce product X. Product X than takes an absolute s***, GM doesn't just sit back and let the outsoruced company deal with it, they act. The US government didn't do that. They sat back and watched for a long while and quite frankly, since we owned the resources and were basically just contracting BP to do the mining of our oil, I'd say that we should have been involved and privy to everything.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jun 16, 2010 -> 04:32 PM) No, because he actually responded. It took your hero 50+ days to get even semi serious... and that took "negotiations" to take over BP. Bush also wasn't afraid to act and help get past that stupid law related to union rights that prevented foreign employees/resources to be assisting us in coastal activities during New Orleans. Obama didn't and because of it, we could have been doing what we are doing now about 40 days ago.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 09:04 AM) A lot of it is what Jason said. You had a LOT more Jamie Moyer type guys that threw 70-83 mph and didn't max out their arms on every pitch like a Bobby Jenks or Eric Gagne. Then the conditioning was also a lot different. There were no pitch counts or 5 days rest and so your arm got conditioned to throwing more often and for longer duration. The Rangers, led by Nolan Ryan, are trying to make a transition to abandoning the obsession with pitch counts. The problem is, the Rangers method is kind of stupid, since the development would have to start at a far younger age to ensure guys muscles are ready to handle it all. Might work a little easier with the high school guys, but college players have to go through quite the transformation and obviously at the very least it needs to be started from the low-minors onward. I think removing guys because of the sake of a pitch count is dumb, you have to watch for things like stress innings, mechanics, etc, but you also have to do what you can to ensure your guys aren't beat up. The reality is these guys make a lot more money than they did in the past so you are benefited by doing what you can to try to reduce the chances of an injury. In the old days, they didn't make tens of millions of dollars so if a guy got hurt, a team didn't have to worry about all of the money it had sank away and how it had ruined there budget.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 07:59 AM) And Iguchi? A common belief has always been that Japanese players age much worse than others due to the insane practices they have over there as well as pitchers throwing 200 pitches or so in games. Well Iguchi wasn't exactly a star in Japan so he was a mediocre player that had a couple solid seasons but quite frankly wasn't all that great/dominant to begin with. Iguchi was one of those guys, and there are many of them, who had a few solid seasons. His only real bad season was 2008.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 08:32 AM) Question is...are they cutting a major deal to buy? I doubt it. The team is capped up financially and has been far too inconsistent for Kenny to be willing to sell minor league talent for major leaguers. I could see him buying on a young player that he thought fit long-term, but even than I doubt it will happen because the Sox flat out can't afford to give up what little upper level talent they have (Viciedo, Flowers, Danks, Morel, and Huddy). And of that talent, it is Viciedo/Huddy/Morel I am most confident in. I still like Danks more than most and think he needs more time. He's a plus defensive player and hits the ball hard and has made some adjustments to his swing that haven't quite clicked. Flowers is a guy I probably will never love, but he has a shot to be a nice OPS type of player at a premium position.

QUOTE (docsox24 @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 08:52 AM) My theory is guys made a heck of a lot less money and didnt have the long term contracts so they knew that they had to pitch or get lost. The owners controlled so much before free agency so guys had to tough it out. Plus the DL rules were a lot less flexible back then. I think it is also a bit of a misconcieved notion that pitchers didn't get hurt in the past. I believe a lot of them got hurt but its hard to remember it because those that did never made it back. I have no statistics to back it up, but I remember hearing that from a few old time players. Now there were clearly guys with rubber arms, but injuries still happened back in the days. I also think hitters are in general better now and pitchers in general throw harder now than ever before. So because hitters are better, you see pitchers have to throw far more high stress pitches and with pitchers throwing faster and being stronger, the ligaments and muscles are more likely to pop-etc. These are all complete, factless theories I personally have. I'm not a doctor and I haven't done a lick of actual statistical research on the # of injuries that happened in the old days vs now. But in the past, if you got hurt, you gutted it out until you couldn't do it anymore because there wasn't a procedure that could fix you magically. Now, you don't keep gutting it out, you undergo surgery because after surgery you have a pretty good shot at a full recovery.

Kalapse has been hard at work on what will be the next badass banner of Soxtalk

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jun 17, 2010 -> 06:54 AM) Though Notre Dame is stronger in basketball, and is worlds better academically. Not that any seems to give a s*** about the academics in all this. I don't get it. Notre Dame's academic standards really aren't that amazing. I might offend some ND grads here, but they are the midwest version of USC. It is an expensive school but much easier to get into than some of the good and even decent public institutions. And there MBA program in terms of the grades/etc you need to get in is a joke.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Jun 16, 2010 -> 05:22 PM) Spain losing today doesn't help their reputation as WC underachievers... I don't see Mexico beating France, I predict a 2-1 French win but I would love to be proven wrong. France can't score 2 goals. They will be lucky to get one and they will go down. France ain't advancing.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 16, 2010 -> 04:33 PM) What makes Ichiro amazing is that he avoided the absolute burn out that so many Japanese players have in the majors. Guys like Shingo, Iguchi, that Mariners closer, etc. have all faded so fast, just like Iwamura has. Shingo faded because he was old. And the Mariners closer also faded because he was old.

White Sox aren't cutting a major deal to sell right now.

QUOTE (Kalapse @ Jun 16, 2010 -> 06:53 PM) Peavy's MRI came back clean and the ailment is now being described as an "achy shoulder". His next start -- which was supposed to be tomorrow -- WILL be pushed back to either Friday or Saturday in Washington. Probably more to do with his body not used to be pitching in a full season given that he missed a hefty chunk of last season.

He did a great job in Birmingham.

This could be good or could be bad. Part of me would like to know there was a reason for his strugglse, but the other part of me thinks he's been much better than his numbers indicated, was rusty, and is getting better and it would suck that he'd be hurt. I'm going to say I hope it is nothing. I got a lot of faith in Peavy turning his s*** around, assuming he's healthy.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 16, 2010 -> 10:47 AM) No one watches MLB Network....it's been a huge bust in the ratings. No one will care about this show, so a "scripted" fight between KW and Ozzie makes no sense. Did anyone even watch the show last year about the Phillies bullpen? They didn't suggest that Chan Ho Park sleep with Scott Eyre's wife or anything like that. Well I love the show.

QUOTE (Palehosefan @ Jun 15, 2010 -> 06:31 PM) Beebe's dumbass said that the Big 12 won't be expanding teams. Basically we have a group of teams that doesn't want to be together, has no TV contract set in stone, and only has one teams interest at heart. There's no chance this conference will be around past 2 years. The ONLY reason the league was saved is because UT got everything they wanted. If the Pac 10 offers Texas Tech or the Big 10 offers Mizzou, it's over. Why doesn't OU have more power? Why does Texas control all. It isn't like they are some small school. They have an exceptional football program (oen of the best in college football history) and recently a pretty strong basketball program.