Balta1701

I'm hoping our lawyer type can weigh in on the Edwards case a bit. From my reading, it actually seems like the Government has something of a difficult case to make here. The person who made the "contributions" that went to Edwards's mistress appears to have been a supporter who had already maxed out in what she was contributing. The Edwards campaign appears to be ready to argue that the money that was passed along to his mistress was therefore not actually campaign contributions, but instead money given between the independent people. I'd be surprised if there is current law on this issue. If I'm running for office and you've maxed out on your contributions to me, that doesn't mean you can't contribute to other people running, and that also doesn't mean you can't make private gifts to people you meet if you happen to decide to do so. It seems like there's illegality here in a lot of places, but I'm not sure that the law itself is prepared to deal with it.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 03:26 PM) What is it with you and these warnings lately? We know! It's the appropriate reply to a person being concerned about playing in the division. Gotta take this series.

QUOTE (danman31 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 03:23 PM) Thankfully a bit too young for a good portion of those to have meaning with me, but it's hard to believe things like the Matrix and American Pie were in the 90s. Watching Matrix 2 and 3 makes it seem so long...not because of how long ago it was but because of how terrible those were.

QUOTE (kane0730 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 03:22 PM) Not a fan of sitting Dunn tonight, even as bad as he's been. Hope I'm wrong. Against a lefty, right now, you just have no choice but to go with the Stealth Elf. It makes your defense better and right now we're gaining on offense by putting him in there.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 01:55 PM) I clicked the s*** out of that people connection button in AOL I tallied nearly $100 in winnings at weekly star trek trivia games on AOL throughout my high school career.

Doesn't that make it sound like it was a totally inconsequential website to anyone else, if no one noticed for 2 weeks?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 02:50 PM) What about the 14 billion we just burned spent wasted lost handed to GM? How can they track revenue but not losses? Because they can print money to cover their losses. In a normal environment, this would lead to inflation, thus requiring higher interest rates which would end up with the Fed taking that money back as interest payments. However, since we're still against the 0% interest rate bound with 9%+ unemployment, inflation continues to be virtually nonexistent, especially outside of food and energy.

QUOTE (The Baconator @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 02:35 PM) Wasn't there some article during spring that said he had tried swinging a lot and swinging a little in the off season, and it never really made a difference? So this year he went with the "never pick up a bat" approach? Correct.

How John Edwards's $400 haircut eventually led to his indictment.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 02:28 PM) i'd love to see the "government loss" column on that page. For the Federal Reserve I'm not sure that there really is such a thing.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 02:17 PM) Is this some sort of parody that has gone just over my head? I'm getting the gist of what you're saying there but its giving me a headache trying to read it.

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 02:11 PM) Donaghy is just trying to get attention. I really can't believe Van Gundy would intentionally saying stuff in LeBron's favor let alone what Donaghy asserts is Van Gundy wagering on the NBA Final's games with inside info. This dude is such a idiot. Huh?

QUOTE (Chet Kincaid @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 01:15 PM) I wonder of Dunn will change his off season (if he even has one) routine. He has to be embarrassed. He supposedly over-did it with the walking away from baseball routine this winter. I'd imagine this is the last time he does that one.

Great White Sharks enjoy AC/DC.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 12:40 PM) I would have let the companies fall, job losses or not. People lost their jobs all over the country, but two select industries got bailouts. It was bulls***. We just created the notion that some businesses are too big to fail and therefore they can continue to f*** up and operate their businesses negligently and the USoA will save them. I'd say we'd already done a lot of that with the few thousand entities bailed out by the Federal Reserve.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:47 AM) be careful what you wish for... If they don't go well, then it all is officially over pretty quick.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:34 AM) They were buying a huge stake in the company (now 70% because of the options it got) regardless of whether the US government propped them up for a matter of months. Chrysler would have gone to bankruptcy and tried to find a buyer. Kinda like what happened anyway. Except that Chrysler would have closed its doors completely and had its assets sold off by a bankruptcy court with everyone in the auto industry out of work. It's pretty darn clear both at the time and in hindsight that Chapter 13 was the only route that any of them would have gone. No one was paying to keep a bankrupt auto manufacturer running, especially considering that sales would have essentially ceased for years.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:25 AM) You don't think there would have been a buyer out there (you know, like Fiat)? You don't think an actual bankruptcy, without the promise that the US government would step in, would have been MORE beneficial to GM during it's reorganization? "Dear X creditor, either you amend our deal or we go bankrupt and you get zero." is a better negotiating position than "dear X creditor, we're going through bankruptcy, but we have the US gov't telling everyone there's absolutely no way we'll go out of business. So, uh...care to change our deal?" I'm guessing they got some REAL favorable terms as part of their restructuring using that line. I think it's pretty clear that if Fiat wanted Chrysler, they had a period of months/years where the company was teetering and they didn't get it done. The only reason Fiat took on the lump that was Chrysler was that they got favorable terms. Otherwise, yes, the company was gone. And even non-bailed-out Ford still said that once one fell, all of them fell.

John Edwards officially indicted.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:15 AM) I'd much rather give millions of people an extra few hundred (or more in many cases) bucks a month for a year than giving a s***ty, failing company 14 billion to give to their executives. And keeping GM and Chrysler afloat. GMAFB. Fiat kept Chrysler afloat, not the government. $14 billion to keep a few hundred thousand people employed for a period of 2+ years is a relative bargain...and it becomes even better if you count all of the auto parts suppliers.

Mark! (x2)

QUOTE (Princess Dye @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:05 AM) Is this wrong, then? He's actually under team control for four years? http://www.spotrac.com/mlb/chicago-white-sox/philip-humber/ Yes, that is wrong. He's an unrestricted Free Agent...if the White Sox choose not to offer him arbitration.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 11:01 AM) I've advocated a one year freeze on obligations to pay back student loan debt held by the federal gov't. Think of all that extra capital that people would have to spend. Spending=better business performance=job hiring=economy back on track. Instead, we'll waste billions on GM to save "300 million" jobs. That'd be a very reasonable and effective method of stimulus that I'd strongly support right now. Targeted to the perfect group; people who are likely to spend the money. It'd be fairly small unfortunately, because the total outstanding amount of student loans are $556 billion, which means that even a full year delay only gets ~$10s of billions of stimulus dollars in that year. It'd be in the right direction, but it's still less in value than increasing unemployment benefits would be. Keeping GM and Chrysler afloat has been an incredibly effective method of stimulus as well.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:56 AM) No wonder businesses are fleeing Fascifornia More funny/sad when you combine this with the negative effective tax rate in the uber-repressive, highest-rate-in-the-developed-world US! The game with "fines" has always been to use your connections/lobbyists to make sure that the fine is smaller than the amount you saved by breaking the law in the first place. That way, your business still comes out ahead by paying the $20k fine for polluting whatever, someone else picks up the tab in the healthcare or cleanup costs, and the local DA/EPA/whatever gets good press by having the local papers run the "company X will pay a $20k fine" article in the local paper.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Jun 3, 2011 -> 10:46 AM) Ya. Completely sucking for 4 years and being able to draft Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner and Posey had nothing to do with it. And where is this young talent your finding? Other than Kung Fu Panda (who they signed as a 17 year old) and the others mentioned, everyone else on that team other than Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford (who aren't even regulars and who I wouldn't consider studs like those mentioned) are 28 and older (unless you consider 28 "young"). Now I will say this. SF does have a very good scouting department (had a good one for a while), and even with high picks like they've had, you still have to make the right decisions and they have done that. (unless you trade a young talent like Liriano away at the time like that one GM's name that is slipping my mind right now did....) When your list basically finds a way to exclude Lincecum, Cain, Bumgartner, Posey, Belt, etc., you've sorta made my point for me.