Balta1701

Michelle Bachmann has canceled a planned trip to South Carolina and scheduled a press conference in a little bit.

Strong, intense, and vehement applause.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 4, 2012 -> 09:43 AM) So apparently there was about 10% less republican turnout at the Iowa GOP caucuses this year than in 2008. I wouldn't have expected that. If there's anything that ought to scare the Republicans, it's this. In 08, there was 2 contested caucuses, so there was likely very little Democrat crossover. In 2012, the Republicans were the only contested caucus, so if Dem leaning independents wanted to cross over and vote for Paul or something like that, they could do so willingly. And yet, turnout dropped a fair amount. They won 10 on the strength of a hugely motivated base. If they can't even match Iowa's turnout from 08, that is a real sign of a disaffected base.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 4, 2012 -> 09:11 AM) Tex, I believe you found concrete that broke off the road. We call that "Anthropomorphite".

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 4, 2012 -> 08:25 AM) Thank you sir. A follow up question. What is the commonality in limestone and what would make one area's limestone different? All of the dikes we saw were rolling up and down, never of the same height. As I understand they were formed by molten rock squeezed up through openings, it is just a small sample size that caused us to only see the rolling dikes or is there some factor I am missing that causes rolling waves? I'll give you the geochemical definition first, since I am a geochemist. A Limestone, by definition, is a non-metamorphosed rock made up mostly of Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3). However, lots of other elements can substitute into that structure. Magnesium can substitute for Calcium, Strontium can go in there, you can get crazy things like uranium, and most of the rest of the periodic table. You can also get variable amounts of other minerals, most commonly quartz, mixed in. Thus, most limestones will have slightly different compositions, chemically. There are also differences in what the limestone is actually made up of. You can have a fossiliferous limestone, made up of shell parts entirely, a micritic limestone, made up of "micrite" which is very fine grained carbonate, and you can have gradations between them. Your sample, for example, coudl be between them...shells in a micritic matrix. Beyond that, different limestones from different eras will be made up of different types of fossils...you won't find trilobite rich fossils in the last 250 million years, because they've been extinct, so a 65 million year old limestone will be different in fossils from a 500 million year old limestone. Can you redescribe the dike question? Not quite sure howt o answer that one from what is written.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 4, 2012 -> 10:00 AM) That should be everyone's worry. I don't see much difference between the potential fraud in absentee mail in ballots and some on-line plan. The biggest issue I see now is that because mail ins are such a small number, they are only a factor in very close races. I believe on-line voting would attract so many people that potential fraud would be magnified and an election could be stolen. The solution to that problem, just like the absentee ballot fraud problem, is stronger voter ID laws.

Really, pulled it off without Rose even touching the ball. I like. Good work coach.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 06:24 PM) It bothers me that people think this represents our state as a whole. What is it, like 15% of eligible voters will actually turn out here?

2/21 shooting in q2. Terrible o inthe first half.

Who is Crowley?

I'm not going to say what they are at 100% certainty from a photo, but I can give you a few possibilities. 1. Could always be something growing on the surface 2. Could be an alteration feature, some small grain altering and giving banding around it. 3. My actual guess (first 2 are hedging my bets)...they look like Brachiopod shells, in a limestone matrix. If that's what they are, the rock has likely been slightly metamorphosed, so that it's quite a bit harder and a few of them have been slightly deforemd. There might be a crinoid or two in there also. Trick when you're looking at limestones...fossils weather out of the rock differently than the rock itself, different crystallinities and different dissolution rates. When you see something on the surface like that, the next step is to break a larger chunk of the rock and look at a fresh surface. I can't judge a "pink layer on top of a limestone" just from that description, need more details. Geologic formations are named by the person that investigates them, and are typically named after something in/around the location where they are described first. That first description is generally referred to as the "Type section" or "Type locality". I note that there is a "Santa Elena Texas" in the South, close to the Rio Grande, which may be the namesake of that particular unit. There are lots of variations in limestones around the world, composition, fossil content, how "lithified" (rocky) it is, etc. You can even find gradations within units, so if you look at the Santa Elana limestone in 1 spot, it doesn't always look like the same limestone in other spots. This of course leads to much confusion, because a limestone that is laterall continuous over hundreds of kilometers will often be described in several locations by several people, leading to multiple formation names for single units. There are at least 5 I've counted for the sandstone that overlies the great unconformity out West, for example. Thus, formation names are always tricky and never fully consistent. There are general rules we try to follow, but that does make the literature confusing. How often do the washes run and where are they sitting in the topography? If you're high up, it's often hard for washes to reset themselves, but lower down, washes can occasionally "crisscross" because different rain systems wind up hitting different areas nad starting floods in different spots. If you had a consistent pattern rain shift, I'd imagine it wouldn't take too long for dry washes in sediment to reset themselves. If you're talking about washes in hard rock that crisscross, that might be a different effect, that could be either a climate shift or a tectonic organization (uplift/downdropping of some rocks relative to others)

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 01:11 PM) If they sign Cespedes and plan on having him start, then De Aza at least deserves to split time with Rios in CF and rotate into LF and RF once or twice a week. The guy flat-out earned that right last season. They can make him the 4th OF, but it should really be more along the lines of a regular/rotating outfielder. If they sign Cespedes...I kinda hope he starts at Charlotte...both because I want to see De Aza play, and because I hate seeing them do things like they did with Alexei...where he basically sat on the bench in April 08 because he was struggling and they had other guys who weren't.

I must say, it is definitely nice to see one candidate get called out over what should be the absolutely ridiculous proposition that states should be able to ban contraception.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 10:25 AM) Between the number of IP being way over his career high, and his performance after he got some rest with his injury, I feel much better about Humber coming into this year. He should be a guy who can put up league average numbers, which is what we want out of him as 5th starter. league average numbers out of the 5th starter position would be stellar, btw.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 11:57 AM) Yeah, maybe they just think they can dump him at the deadline for more than they gave up. If he's on one of his streaks in July, I guess they might be right. That, and it doesn't hurt to win a few extra games to try to keep people in your ballpark too.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 12:18 PM) On a great team, DeAza is the perfect fourth, a more dynamic version of Ryan Sweeney. With the White Sox, because of our barren farm system, he gets starting time. Otherwise, it's Lillibridge...assuming Rios and Viciedo produce this year (big assumption, in the case of Alex Rios). If De Aza could put up a .775 OPS, 20+ stolen bases, and an OBP close to .350, he'd be a starter for most teams in baseball. He'd have been a starter for the Marlins had he not destroyed his leg, and people rarely seem to question the Marlins scouting and development people.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 12:27 PM) Yeah, I can't get enough. Thankfully, I'm a bastard and called Comcast and told them if they didn't give me League Pass for free, I'd cancel and go to DirecTV, because they made me that offer (they didn't actually make said offer). So, free NBA League Pass all year long! Wrong year to make that offer. You lose 20% of your free games.

I should also add...there are still some substantial parts of campaign finance law that this court has yet to have the opportunity to strike down. Personal campaign contribution limits, by their standard, are an obvious infringement on unfettered rights to free speech, but there was no good reason to strike that down in the Citizens United case. Similarly, disclosure requirements can be further removed as impediments to speech.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 09:31 AM) Well, for one thing, I am not so sure. When you have widn socks like Alito on there, if they feel enough heat, they may come back and agree with the narrowness to cover themselves. And for another thing, it will take a couple years or more for this to wind back to SCOTUS most likely, and who knows what the makeup will be at that time. Alito is not a "Windsock" by any reasonable definition I've seen. He's an ardent Conservative Republican and will vote that way. His vote is as predictable as anyone's. And outside of Justice Kennedy, I find it to be unreasonable to think that any of the 5-4 majority that produced Citizens United will have any reason to depart in the next 5+ years unless there happens to be another Republican in office. Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts will be regulars there for the next several decades, more than likely. None of them will be departing if Obama remains in office barring catastrophic and sudden health issues. It's perhaps more likely that the makeup of the court will become even more anti-good-government in the next decade, should a Republican win the White House and be given the opportunity to replace Justice Kennedy.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 09:24 AM) I don't even know who our 5th starter is going to be for 2012... Danks Floyd Peavy Sale Humber Pick your order...unless you think Floyd is getting traded.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 09:18 AM) Maybe. The narrow interperetation may stand, and may force this whole thing back to SCOTUS to clarify. You do realize that with this court, that is the last possible thing you'd want, right?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 09:12 AM) the only way Viciedo leaves Chicago is if Kenny trades him. Figured it was useful to stick the clause "unless he's released" in there just in case. I mean, after the 2009 season, it'd be hard to figure that 2 years later Beckham would be 1-2 seasons away from being a possible non-tender candidate, but here we are.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 09:07 AM) Did Kenny Williams get fired? No, but he did offer to step down as GM. Afraid you lost me with the connection there though?

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 3, 2012 -> 09:02 AM) 759-790 OPS would seem to be pretty realistic...although I'm sure most would prefer to project 800-850. To have real value, he has to be well over the 800 mark, to offset his defensive liabilities. But he's still very very young, we keep forgetting that. We'll have him for years 23, 24, 25 and 26, correct? Dayan Viciedo is under White Sox team control for the next 6 seasons, assuming he isn't cut/released.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 2, 2012 -> 10:46 PM) This was a fairly stunning event in terms of the godawful Citizens United decision. Basically... not only did the MT Supreme Court in no uncertain terms say that the Citizens United decision was a horrible miscarriage of justice - and that corporations did not deserve even equal duty to voting rights let alone special ones... but also decided it was only very narrowly tailored to fit the specific instance in that case. As such, a Montana state law banning anonymously funded poltiical speech was upheld. This makes me happy, and I thought deserved its own thread. Just curious... did anyone here, no matter what party they associate with, think that SCOTUS decision was a good one in any way, shape or form? With the law on the books the way it currently sits, it was the correct decision. It's also still hard to justify the underlying basis of where the case came from...that a privately funded group shouldn't be allowed to put out an Anti-Hillary movie just before the election, solely because it happens to be close to an election date. That was difficult to square constitutionally anyway...that some types of private spending are more limited clsoe to an election date but not at other dates. BTW, as the article you posted notes, it won't take long for a Federal Court to overturn this ruling on appeal.