Balta1701

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 03:46 PM) So this justifies blanket amnesty? Come on. I'll meet you half way, i've only argued that what he's doing is wrong. Penalties/fines should be mandated. Mandatory deportation from this point forward (even for children), etc. etc. We can't keep saying, "oh think of the kids! make them all legal" and then in 10 years do the same thing. That's not a system for making people utilize the legal process. It's condoning and promoting illegal activity. My problem is that anything I describe is going to come back to you as being described as "Blanket amnesty". The general ideas behind any workable proposal would have to involve taking the 10 million+ people here already and providing them a path to citizenship. I am more than willing to listen to whatever penance people suggest they need to perform to get on that path. Paying a significant fine of several thousands of dollars, a long (perhaps extra-long) waiting period if they don't return to their home country, fine. But by your standard, anything along those lines would condone and promote illegal activity, because it is rewarding people who are already here. Any attempt to solve this problem while maintaining your focus on refusing amnesty...refusing to "condone and promote illegal activity" will fail. It's no different than what we're doing right now. Unless you give the 10-20 million people already here a better option than being undeclared, they will remain undeclared, and you will continue to be outraged over why we're tolerating those lawbreakers. If you try to deport them and the jobs remain, others will just continue to take their place, no matter how much money or effort is put into border security.

It seems actually fairly surprising that the Court didn't announce anything regarding this case this morning, which this writer interprets currently as the court simply not knowing what it's going to do with this case. If they were going to hear the case, they would normally have announced that today, if they were going to summarily reject the case, they would have announced that today.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 02:39 PM) Then do it. There's nothing stopping them. "Well officer, I mean I wanted to follow the speed limit, but it's so much faster to get to my destination going 150mph than 65mph..." Oh, ok. That's acceptable! And yes, I'm arguing there were not as many benefits because people didn't EXPECT those benefits like they do today. That fundamentally changes the entire argument. And of course we're ignoring the main reason we had such an open door policy - a vast wild west that needed to be populated. And again, no one is claiming that LEGAL immigration is a bad thing, so i'm not sure why you keep saying what the benefits of LEGAL immigration are. I agree with you. What I don't agree with is just unilaterally declaring illegal aliens legal. That's condoning legal behavior. That's giving a big stink finger to everyone else who did things the right way and worked hard to get here. Alphadog made a good point about that that no one has addressed yet. The real problem of course is that there IS no good answer that will satisfy you, because the only answer that will satisfy you is "They're all illegal and therefore they all must be deported". Anything other than that, any policy which remotely acknowledges that we already have 10 million people sitting here in this country is an amnesty and that isn't an option because amnesty is evil. Whether it's paying a fine, filling out an application, etc., any policy which acknowledges that there are 10 million+ people already here and gives any advantage to those 10 million people is an amnesty under your definition of amnesty. You cannot simply pass policy and pretend that there aren't 12-20 million illegal immigrants already in this country. We're spending $20 billion a year now on the Southern border, and despite that, it's taken >8% unemployment to get immigration to settle mostly at that level. Deportations are at record highs, and that hasn't made a dent, and no one is out there praising the President for how much he's ramped up deportation enforcement, because none of it makes a dent. If you try to write a policy which requires all 10 million of them to leave, they're just...not going to leave, and you will continue to have the same problem. If you're going to continue demanding that there be a solution that doesn't acknowledge that overly strict limits to immigration have created a problem on the scale of 10 million+ people, then there can be no solution.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 01:25 PM) 13-18 year olds still love all the garbage that Sandler dumps out (for the most part). That following alone will keep the wheels turning. Not based on how little this one grossed?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 11:14 AM) Except that in Illinois you can get a driver's license with a canceled check and a school transcript. Nothing about citizenship is required. www.cyberdriveillinois.com/publications/pdf_publications/dsd_x173.pdf Do you know why some states would do that? Because adding immigration checks to drivers licenses has the unfortunate side effect of making sure that any illegal immigrants who happen to be in that state also go without drivers permits and without car insurance, leading to many more uninsured motorist claims that the rest of the population has to pay for, higher insurance rates, and very angry insurance company lobbyists. This problem does not go away until you deal with it at the national level and acknowledge the demand for these people and the fact that they're already here. Plenty of states say that you can't get a license without an immigration status check. It does nothing.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 10:58 AM) No, they wouldn't be allowed to, because getting a drivers license or state ID should include your citizenship status (which would therefor require proof of your citizenship status). Illegals wouldn't be able to get that without providing false documents. So, exactly the effective scenario we have now.

QUOTE (Disco72 @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 08:34 AM) Did you go last night? What'd you think of Castro? I really wasn't impressed. He was by no means bad, but I never once thought "this guy is special." Then again, I'm not known for my scouting abilities! ...and those HRs were absolutely crushed! Yeah, I don't know where that first one landed. Jonathan Gaston. Anyone know anything? I added comments and photos to people's AAP pages, including Castro. Hit up there if you want to see comments on him. Wasn't watching Verlander, but looked like he had everything together to be a solid big league pitcher.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 10:22 AM) This whole argument is a bunch of BS. Create a new information line on a drivers' license that states the status of your citizenship and this whole problem would be resolved. Make it a mandate for anyone that gets pulled over to offer that proof. Wait, allowing illegal immigrants to get drivers' licenses isn't going to bring about the end of humanity?

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Jun 18, 2012 -> 10:36 AM) I think so. If they could deal either of those guys and get back some decent prospects (along with ridding of the salary), I would think they'd do it. I wonder which one would be more heavily sought? Do you consider Dunn to be tradeable, too? The Sox could dump a ton of salary and pick up some pieces for the future. Of course, we want to win, but if they are 5 games back or so at the break... I'd have to think that if you put Dunn on Waivers right now, some team in need of offense would claim him. I'm not sure about Rios yet.

Circa 90 mph fastball and ~80 mph breaking pitch did a fine job in AA, hard to know whether his stuff will translate to higher levels.

Wasn't the best weekend for Jared. I believe he pulled an 0/5 yesterday, and took a walk but got picked off the day before. He's not a physically imposing guy but you can see him getting quickly down the line. He definitely worked the count well, and made some contact, but it wasn't enough to really push it to the wall. I believe there were more than a few fly balls in that mix. I'd like to see him hitting the ball more on a line drive/hard grounder to take advantage of his speed.

This was Andre's first game at AA. Wasn't the greatest game ever. Fastball topped out at 91, but was more consistently 88-90. Believe he featured a slider also. Biggest problem for Andre was control. He was simply all over the place. Fell behind almost every hitter, most of his pitches were at the top of the zone or the bottom of the zone, and that gave guys a chance to sit back and wait on him throwing a fastball. Was pulled after 3+ innings, presumably because of a pitch count since he hadn't thrown in a while.

Kussmaul's probably a guy who will get people out throughout the minor leagues, he's not an over the top thrower, has a low arm motion. Can't tell how much movement he gets. I believe he topped out around 89-90 but could be wrong on that. It's hard to tell how well a guy like this translates to the big leagues, because minor league hitters are going to be fooled by that motion they haven't seen before. At a higher level, it might translate or it might not, that'll wind up depending a lot on how easy his pitches are to pick up. He also throws something offspeed in there.

I'm working on writing up my impressions. Saw lots of guys, can only type so fast Simon looked really, really solid for a guy in AA. He gave up a couple runs but those runs weren't on things that were hit hard. One run, for example, scored on a swinging bunt that Simon tried to barehand but couldn't field cleanly. Another run was set up when he threw the ball past 1b on an attempted pickoff play. Another hit happened to go perfectly between SS and 3b, not hit hard. Put a major league defense behind him and give him a year of PFP along with a big league staff and this could have been a shutout. When guys like the Hawk say things like "it'll look like a line drive in the box score", this game was what he was talking about. Simon could easily have given up 0 or 1 run. Simon had the best fastball I saw in 2 days at Smokies park. He was regularly 90-92, and when he got in trouble in the 2nd inning he popped one at 93. To go with that, he was putting a solid breaking ball up there. Couldn't tell you exactly what every pitch was, but he was able to get more than a few swings and misses with guys out ahead of breaking stuff that came in between 77-85 (I'd assume there was both a change and a curve/slider in there, but you can't recognize pitches from the side). Most importantly, the guy was ahead of everyone it seemed. Every count was 1-2 or 0-1 or 1-1 at the worst. Kid threw strikes. Looked good. Pitched 6 innings, velocity stayed consistent the whole game, didn't seem like he tired out, could probably have gone farther. Reasonable candidate for Charlotte at some point this year.

Santos picked up the save on the day I saw him, pitching I think 1.2 innings. Didn't get hit hard although wasn't perfect. Was throwing a fastball that topped out at ~92 on the AA gun. Control wasn't perfect but he wasn't terrible either, was able to pitch ahead of guys, and most importantly he was able to make a couple people look really bad using a breaking ball that I'm going to guess was a slider. If he got ahead of people, he was able to use that as a putaway pitch. With his motion, I'd expect he has a big league future as lefty specialist. Seemed like he was a little bit above sidearm, but with those long arms it cant' be easy for a lefty to pick him up.

You get a Santos Rodriguez thread because I happened to see him pitch. Lefty. Throws somewhere between 3/4 and sidearm, with speed, which means he probably has a future as a lefty specialist. Sox picked up Santos originally in the deal that sent Vazquez to Atlanta. Born: 1/2/88 Ht: 6'5" Wt: 180 Futuresox.com profile: Scouting report It's rare to see a player come over as part of a trade involving a high profile player like Javier Vazquez and still spend another year in rookie ball. Rodriguez, who spent most of 2009 with rookie level Bristol for the Sox after coming over from the Braves, fits that unusual profile. His fastball is a big reason why he dominated rookie ball for two seasons (14 K/9 in '08 and '09). It usually sits 91-93 with good sink, but he has shown signs of increasing velocity. His slider is a developing pitch that will likely determine if he has a future in the Majors. Sometimes it doesn't have sharp bite, but can be deadly. He also has a changeup that needs a lot of improvement before it can be used as a solid offering. Baseball America has said he could be a starter, but the Sox view him as a reliever. 2011 is the first time Rodriguez hasn't produced a K/9 over 9 and his control has remained mediocre.

Here's some Leroy Hunt. Had to say h is name on the video since I genuinely hadn't heard of him.

Here he is on the mound:

Some Jose Martinez photos:

Ton of Castro photos. Here he is dancing with the Jerry Lewis type guy:

Kussmaul photos: