Jake

Veal was our left handed specialist. Thornton was our late inning pitcher that usually started his inning against lefties. They were not used the same because Thornton has the repertoire to get both righties and lefties out (or neither, depending how you look at it)

I think Boehner may be coming around to the idea of putting a compromise bill up for a vote. You can pass a bill via any majority, not just 100 percent of the majority party. Once we go over the cliff, he loses more leverage and gets closer to losing his job.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 21, 2012 -> 07:29 AM) If you really want to change it up only do eccentric or negative work. This type of activity is the strongest type of contract and will increase muscle mass the fastest. It is also the only way muscles gets sore. Important note - certain lifts need a spotter when you do negatives!

People keep talking about alcohol - - - several states have all liquor stores state-operated. This might help with gun sales?

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:41 PM) At least Flowers has good defense on his resume'. Fields had nothing. I saw him playing for the Albuquerque Isotopes last year. Still has big power and can't hit a fastball.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:37 PM) At this point, it's just about better then any alternative any of these dumbs***s can come up with. Does it bother you that the cliff is projected to send us into another recession while a more lateral movement will likely maintain growth? Not trolling, just trying to see what you think.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:23 PM) Yea. Just like health care. Jam everything up our ass!! YEA! Move to Europe if you don't like this country. lol Do you prefer the "cliff?" It would be very effective deficit reduction.

It was fun watching a complete meltdown of Republican leadership this evening. How quickly can they/will they replace Boehner? Would replacing him even help us avert the cliff? At this point the Dems need to try to pick off about 25 Republicans and jam this f***er through.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:00 PM) Do they pay the same percentage in taxes? No, because they have no money. To get those benefits, of course, most of them paid taxes their entire working lives.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 07:06 PM) I think his inability to catch the ordinary pitch was alarming. I've never seen a catcher close to as bad as AJ was last year. It's true, while there's a decent argument to be made about his throwing...he dropped off big time when it came to catching and blocking balls. At times it was alarming. He looked either slow or lazy, at many times. Will probably have a chance to be an occasional DH in Texas

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 06:09 PM) Yeah, the only way to possibly defend this move is from a business perspective. We just got a massive downgrade in a huge position of need. Do we have any capable catchers in the minors? Flowers is our catching prospect. Sox fans want us to develop prospects then hate when we let go of a 36 year old catcher to let the kids play. We have a few other guys in the minors that look like they'd be replacement level catchers.

QUOTE (knightni @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 06:04 PM) I would bet that it could really happen; while hitting .225. The chances aren't bad that he still posts a higher OBP at that average.

Tyler Flowers will be fine. Will probably hit more HRs than AJ next year and definitely will the next.

I think the "Soxtalk Group Think" was generally upset at the amount of high-pressure situations in which we used Matt Thornton last year. The coaching staff seemed to trust him quite a bit, especially given his workload.

The slippery slope argument is the most ridiculous BS I've ever heard. As long as people don't want all guns to be gone (only sub-10% want that), they won't take all the guns away. On the other hand, a strong majority favor some particular restrictions like an assault weapons ban, restrictions on high capacity clips, and improved enforcement on background checks and the closing of the gun show loophole. Those things are constitutional, so the will of the people should be done. If the government wanted to take away your guns, they would actually try to amend the 2nd amendment. Nobody is doing that. When they start a big campaign to remove the 2nd amendment from the Constitution, you can worry about your guns.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 01:39 PM) No, it does not. You're right. The only thing you need to "change" to make a muscle grow is progressively increase the resistance. The only benefit to occasionally changing things up is if your original design was flawed to the extent that you were neglecting certain muscles. Even then, it wouldn't be productive to completely change your workout very often if you plan on making specific muscles grow. If you want to get sweaty, then sure, just sweat in every different way you want to. For someone that wanted to improve their physique via muscle growth, their workouts need not look that much different from month to month. There are certain lifts and movements that should always be in your routine if possible.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 11:33 AM) Also, I don't think you can really fault their drafting given they've been in the 20's for a while. The success rate picking in the 20's is pretty low. Their last late-lottery pick was Joakim Noah, a similar caliber player would be a godsend. I'm not upset with our draft success, really. We've had a total dud or two, but we tend to get some value.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 11:23 AM) You often turn it to be about the messenger as if you're above the fray. Anyway, the Sox don't have the talent level to contend and rebuild at the same time. Missing the playoffs again because of Viciedo not being able to produce against right-handers isn't worth the time spent to develop him. lol! You've gotta be kidding me.

So my dad is an FFL which means he has had lots of people calling him to get them some assault weapons. He called his distributors and they all have said that every distributor in the US is completely sold out of assault weapons. Seems odd. I wonder if the distributors are hoarding them or if some retailer(s) bought them all out. QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:57 AM) There is one big difference. In those other countries, they censor violence and celebrate sex. In America it's the opposite. A kid can watch someone get their head blown off, but god forbid he sees a boob! That's not quite right. We censor sex more than anybody else, which is ridiculous, but they don't censor much at all, particularly in Europe. I will say that most filmmakers/creative minds abroad tend to lean towards sexual storylines because that is something more people relate to and they don't have to worry about the MPAA giving them an NC-17 rating. And don't worry, Tea Party Nation says the problem here is too much sex! Our children become sexually frustrated and want to shoot people, I guess. QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 08:58 AM) argument over Sandy Hook shooting ends in gunfire http://gawker.com/5969933/argument-over-sa...ends-in-gunfire If only the customer had been armed, too! edit: This is why saying "we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals/bad guys" is meaningless. I'm sure Davis was a Law Abiding Citizen prior to this, as was the guy who shot someone at Little Caesers, and Dunn, and Zimmerman, and, of course, Nancy and Adam Lanza. Just because there are ignorant people that shoot each other for no reason, that does not mean we shouldn't target people that are obviously the wrong people. Like this guy, try to find a way to get illegal weapons off the streets. I still love that idea where you would give cash payouts for people to turn in illegal weapons. They might game the system a little bit, but in the end you're getting guns out of circulation. QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Dec 20, 2012 -> 09:07 AM) See, this is the disconnect for me in this discussion. There are people who have guns, who have grown up with guns and don't live on top of someone else because they have land and space. They DO use guns on the weekends for kicks. I grew up with land and I would routinely go out and shoot at cans or clay pigeons or whatever. I wasn't killing anything. I wasn't shooting someone because I needed to wait for a pizza, I shot at a plastic or tin object because it was FUN to do. Surprisingly i'm not some deranged individual that might shoot someone at any moment! Shocking! Edit: bolded the wrong part. fixed. I grew up with lots of land and I shot some stuff in the yard too. This is probably harmless. However, not many people can do this so IMO it hardly applies. But yes, like others were saying I could have driven my 4 wheeler drunk and whatever else and probably never gotten in trouble and possibly never hurt anybody but myself.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:02 PM) Via less guns in the hands of everyone. You don't know who the "wrong person" is until they're shooting someone over crappy pizza or loud music or taking their mother's guns and killing 26 people. We don't have pre-cogs. I think we can all agree that a focus of new gun-related legislation should be new or better ways to get guns out of the hands of people that should not have them. The easiest way to narrow these people down is figuring out who has guns illegally and getting those illegal guns off of the market and destroyed.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 08:24 PM) I don't think it is all that different. Alcohol related deaths outnumber gun related deaths so why is one OK and not the other? Alcohol requires a second step to be dangerous. A bottle of beer is not dangerous. Being drunk is not dangerous (there is a limit here, sure). Being drunk AND driving is dangerous. Being drunk AND wielding a gun is dangerous. People have been drinking beer for about as long as human civilization has existed. Guns are a relatively new invention and particularly, the modern semi-automatic weapon is new -- significantly, it post-dates our constitution. It is rather difficult, comparatively, to use a gun for mere private use. Every time you fire a weapon, there is significant risk. Nobody sits at home on the weekend and fires off their gun, there's almost no place you can live in which it makes sense for you to fire your gun in your home or on your property. This is why you have to go to a club (or Little Caesar's apparently) to shoot your gun. This is why if you go to a gun range and someone unconsciously waves their gun around, everyone in the place ducks for cover. Becoming drunk and dangerous requires a series of calculated decisions and, often, neglect on part of your peers. A gun becomes dangerous the second you're near it. This is why you have to take a class in the state of IL to legally own a firearm or hunt. One unconscious pull of a trigger can be the death of somebody. If I'm simply demented or perhaps even just angry to an unprecedented extent, I can use the gun out of malice and kill people, perhaps many people. There aren't many good uses for alcohol in that situation, save self-medication. They're both dangerous, but they're totally different. One's function is death -- it can be avoided and in most cases is, thanks to so many conscientious gun owners like myself. However, when it functions properly it kills or performs an action that would be lethal if pointed in the right place. Beer's function, primarily, is a beverage and its original use was a matter of nutrition. It was a way to eat barley. You can have too much, which is bad like most things. You can then drive, which is yet another calculated decision that is separate from your drinking too many beers. We should also add that the maximum lethality of a drunk driver is not all that impressive compared to the well-armed gunman.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 07:13 PM) Maybe the solution is simply to have states (or zones/areas within states allowing guns) with no handguns and other states where people can shoot each other at will (with SYG-like regulations or "non-regulations"). We're a democracy, let people have the right to choose. And probably if we did have state-by-state petitions, even now, 35-40 states would still choose to allow guns (even semi-automatic rifles), one would venture to guess. Municipal and state gun bans are undermined by how easy it is to bring them in from just outside the restricted area.

GOP likes Simpson-Bowles until BO submits a more conservative version of it. http://goo.gl/mag/V3rsnUM

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 10:55 AM) The ex texted me last night and said she had a dream about me. LOL Open and honest.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 19, 2012 -> 03:16 PM) Doing nothing means the entirety of the Bush taxcuts expire. The sequester also exempts the entitlement programs that Democrats should be fighting hardest to protect, like SS, Medicare and TANF (foodstamps). There's substantial defense cuts. Democrats have the Senate and the White House. Their majority in one gets stronger next year and they close the gap a little bit in the House. I don't know how you can say that their reelection isn't threatened by this negotiation. The country in general soured on Republicans after the debt ceiling fiasco and are much, much more likely to hold Republicans responsible for this one as well. The country perceives this stuff as the President. People vote for their reps based on pork, social stuff, and just general incumbency. The vast majority in the House do not come from competitive districts anyway.