Jake

sorry if repost, but this could settle everything

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Oct 24, 2012 -> 09:37 AM) My God. NBA 2K13 - how do they do it? How do they improve upon perfection? My alt-reality Bulls are going to be fun. I'm forcing Rose to miss the first half of the season, but will make moves around with the team keeping the core intact. I wish they could figure out a way to get the amnesty clause in the game so I could easily rid myself of Boozer. Boozer > Steve

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Oct 24, 2012 -> 12:30 AM) I personally think greg is reveling in his newfound celebrity. He's become the most popular person on the board. Even moreso than the awful kalapse. greg doesn't really care for ozzie THIS much. oh and q, happy late b-day. i saw that you had just turned 20 but was too drunk too send a pm.

I like to ask this to beer lovers... how much/often do you drink? I assume most of us don't get hammered from our beer on a TOO regular basis, but I know a guy that is professional bodybuilder yet hardly spends a night sober. Freak of nature. I tend to drink 1 per day, sometimes up to 3. I rarely, if ever, drink to intoxication...I'm just too busy.

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 10:09 PM) The New Glarus cherry beer (new belgium red) is absolutely delicious. It's not manly beer, but who cares, great as a change of pace. Over a pound of cherries in every bottle. 16 oz of cherries in a 12 oz bottle?

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 09:31 PM) McCain knew about them and didn't use it. He refused to use Jeremiah Wright ads too and got a lot of flack about it from a lot of Republicans. If so, that's great. My experience is that my parents and I both received calls from our local Republican Party office as well as robo-calls perpetuating various myths about the then-candidate Obama and that really harmed our perception of the party and thus the candidate.

Real cool, thanks for sharing. I feel heard

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 09:07 PM) I actually agree with you - if this is his big "bombshell", it will backfire. Hazzah! Trump unites the nation When reading about the cocaine allegations, I was actually very impressed by the Romney campaign for rejecting that sort of business. I feel like McCain's campaign would not have done that.

I'm going to have to make a "to get" list when I'm back in IL over the Christmas holiday where the pickin's are pretty good. Here in TN that's not so much the case. Really enjoying the locally brewed Yazoo Hefeweizen (favorite style of beer already) that was recommended to me already ITT. Awesome alternative to what had previously been my favorite in this style, Franziskaner (unfortunately owned by AB InBev). I will probably stick with the Yazoo indefinitely for this style. I also got a sixer of this even more local (Memphis) brew, Ghost River. Probably a bit more forgettable, honestly. Their best brew is one they don't bottle at this point, an amber ale. This one is a Kolsch.

Loria is not a model owner by any means, but that's reflected in the fact that he HIRED Ozzie, not that he fired him. Ozzie may manage again if he wishes to and shuts his trap, but he'll need a washing out period to forget the things we didn't like about him...sort of like what Valentine did for quite a while. Ozzie better hope he gets better after the layoff and not worse like Bobby V

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 08:18 PM) maybe he managed to get Obama's academic transcripts, just like Bush's transcripts came out. I doubt that'd be worth the hype. The only way it would is if the President had taken a class in socialism or some BS like that. Maybe he drudged up some pro-socialist college essay or something, eh? Nowadays things like that are going to become more frequent (not yet) due to that kind of info getting stored electronically.

Dunn's run/RBI production last year made his contract fair. If all he does is have similar seasons, I'm honestly okay with that. In the end, my philosophy is that your typical metrics like BA, OPS, K's are just things we used to project someone's potential to contribute runs to the team (either by scoring them or driving them in). Those metrics are cause for concern, but if he wants to hit 40+ HR and 95+ RBI along with being 2nd on the team in runs scored (I think) then I'm okay with his contract, especially considering that it isn't real long term at this point. As for his bat speed, not the issue. He isn't behind fastballs, he just misses them often. It's arguably a more fixable problem. QUOTE (Marty34 @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 06:32 PM) Absolve KW of any blame for Thome, but Guillen gets the credit for Garcia then. O RLY? QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 06:40 PM) Ozzie was involved in the negotiations with Seattle to trade for Freddy Garcia? Exactly. To say "dump player X because I like player Y on our own roster better" is an easily executable move. To say "Freddy Garcia the All-Star and ace pitcher is worth trading for, go get him" is super easy to say. Hey Kenny, dream big! Get Mike Trout! See, I have great trade ideas too. KW still gets a good share of the credit for Freddy because he negotiated the trade, managed to give away nothing, then robbed the Phillies blind when we dealt Freddy away.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/23/trump-ad...-about-cocaine/

The world and country is so different than it was when so many concessions were made for small states. The different large states are so different and spread apart at this point that it is not as if they are going to make some coalition to trample over other states. No one at the national level is doing much for their state specifically anyway, they're all idealogues that only think of their home district/state when it comes to things that might get them re-elected (here, have a highway!) and I think those will be given out at roughly the same rates in either sort of system. On the national presidential election level, it doesn't make any sense to have this nondemocratic buffer. It is one position in government that is already balanced by the Congress that accounts for giving extra seats to small states that magically need extra help via representation. Even if a simple "most votes wins" Presidential election is not as just something like the Alternate Vote I presented earlier, it is unequivocally better than the current system.

http://www.examiner.com/article/trump-anno...to-be-bombshell Trump better be careful, because I have to think to some extent it could backfire if it's something as "innocent" as he and Michelle once having marital problems. I think a lot of people have considered divorce or have been divorced and would feel bad for him rather than judge him for having to save his marriage at some point. If he cheated or something, that sympathy might go away...but again, how do you prove something like that? I feel like Trump would also be the type that could potentially come out and endorse the guy, just to be different. Remember, Donald Trump was once nationalized healthcare's biggest advocate so his political views are certainly malleable.

It's the damn information age. Even if it is not expedient for a candidate to drive to my hometown in Pontiac, IL...they sure as hell care about that kind of people's votes and they will make efforts to get those votes.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 02:25 PM) And the President is to represent everyone, not just highly populated areas. As the video I posted explains, the top 100 cities combined still only cover 20% of our population. From a strategic standpoint, one will have to remember that very few cities are actually very competitive so there will be a strategic issue in determining where it is that undecided voters live. Do they live in cities? Do they live in my city that is 80% democrat at >1M people? Probably not, but who knows. They would be spreading campaign dollars EVERYWHERE to try to get every last vote. This change, IMO, should have a tremendous effect on turnout since so many people would no longer have the feeling of being disenfranchised. The myth that everyone has an equal voice would become truth.

For those thinking of electing a third party as a sure-fire way of fixing things, realize the problem is in our winner-take-all system of representation. I can tolerate it on the national level, but not for our legislative bodies. Here's a simple example of an alternative (aptly named). This even provides a scenario as if it was implemented into our own bipolar system.

This video even addresses why politicians couldn't focus solely on cities in a reformed system.The best part is that the system is just as inequitable, even if every single state was competitive.

Though cuts to military spending is somewhat hard to sell, it's much easier to sell than cuts to Medicare/Social Security, the only other expenses that rival the military. There are just a huge amount of people that use or are thinking about the time they will use Medicare/Social Security and don't want to think of those things changing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 11:18 AM) By cutting the revenue you're kicking the economy into gear and increasing your revenues over time. Obama's plan is basically nothing at this point. Wait it out. We've been waiting 4 years and not much has improved. This is speculation. Recent history has shown this to not have much of an effect. Moody's predicts that at our current pace, we will gain 12 million new jobs by 2016 (that number sound familiar?). This would probably encourage a sitting President to wait it out. QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 23, 2012 -> 11:20 AM) Europe has shown pretty clearly that austerity will only make things worse, as well as our own experience with the Bush tax cuts. Yep. A better argument would be if we had European-level tax rates to begin with, kind of like the levels they were at when Reagan slashed them down.

@AnnCoulter: I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard

On Suh's hit, I agree with the posts after mine. I have no problem saying that there are no problems with the tackle in a vacuum. In context of Suh's past, it seems like just another emotional, intent-to-harm play.

Romney can shove fiscal conservatism up his ass as long as he wants to increase military budget and our presence abroad while cutting dollars at home. I'm happy to entertain ideas about budget slashing, etc. but he is not one I'm going to support. Increase military budget, cut healthcare reform and education spending. Okay. Well will the budget at least be balanced? No, we're actually going to cut our revenue. Don't harp on balancing the budget if your idea is essentially the same as Obama's -- I'm going to bridge the gap with increased revenue from a recovered economy. The only difference is one person will retain tax rates and much of current services while one will cut both, leaving largely the same deficit. Asinine. His buddy Paul Ryan is a sham as a fiscal conservative as well, it's disappointing. Will a decent conservative please stand up? And then sit down when it comes to legislating social issues?

I find it to be fundamentally good, even if the jokes that come out are about smaller things. It's political discourse either way. You want politics to be in the mainstream. The catch is, politics are difficult to talk about and sometimes you need little quips if you want to keep things fresh. The nitty gritty is confusing, frustrating, and gets boring after it has been rehashed too much. You can only talk about it so much. You start dropping "big bird," "binders full of women," etc. and you not only keep the campaign in people's minds, you encourage people to find the source of these things. How many times are you going to read "binders full of women" on facebook before you figure out where it came from? You might read the context and find it very troubling that Romney specifically sought out some special woman as if he were trying to fill a quota or you might be so pleased that the guy you heard was anti-woman was trying to keep female company in his workplace. Our society values fun and that's awesome. Not only do we encourage open discussion about politics, we discuss it so much that we have to digress into humor to keep it fresh. We can make fun of people protected by the Secret Service and not find the Secret Service knocking at our door. I also don't think that all of these things are trivial when you look into them. "47%" - this was a huge thing going around and what an important thing to talk about. Am I in the 47%? What did he say about them? Do I like a system that results in such a number being able to be thrown around? "Big Bird" - Romney wants to cut PBS. By itself, this may be very important to some people and to others they will find it troubling that that is the largest specific budget cut he had shared to that point. "Binders full of women" - I touched on this. This will inform your opinion of that candidate's gender views one way or the other. "horses and bayonets" - This throws a wrench in the way we judge our military. It's an apt point that our military strength isn't so easily counted in numbers of things or dollars spent. It may also characterize one person as out of touch with the needs of our military if you see it that way. I think it summarized the debate very well as the two agreed on most everything, but at this moment and others it seemed they agreed because one person was simply learning from the other. These are the things that encourage discussion, turnout, thought, you name it. You might not like that everyone that participates in these catchphrases and buzzwords knows much, but they will know MORE as more of these things happen. To think that these things are the only things being talked about after the debates is also an oversimplification -- yet I'm happy that for the low-information folks, they're at least thinking SOMETHING about the debates and the election.