Balta1701

QUOTE (Tex @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 10:22 PM) No but I am beginning to think we should be willing to take the same risks to our environment that we are having other countries make. Perhaps it is more symbolic than a solution, but refusing to drill here or there while buying supertankers of oil from around the world is starting to feel a little hypocritical to me. And along with that, perhaps we shouldn't be using 25% of the world's oil. "Refusal to drill here" is the most confusing term here, as though it's a political decision and not a business decision. Saw a report yesterday that something like 60% of the leased land for oil production and a similar fraction leased for gas production is not currently being used for anything.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 06:27 PM) Ya, if we win tonight and they lose, we're only 2 back of them. Granted, that's still a good amount of ground to make up with so little games left but they're in a tailspin right now so who knows. Tailspin = all 3 of their big 3 have been hurt.

MARK!

F*** it...DUNN. Even if he loses...welcome to the party.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 06:32 PM) At least Sale, Thornton, and Sergio are having some fun w/ this snow..... http://www.csnchicago.com/03/31/11/Sox-Dra...&feedID=661 Don't hurt yourself boys! Thornton's wild and wacky left arm.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 05:03 PM) But see, this is the attitude which kills any real reform in this area. It's not a one side fix. It's not just saying the rich have exploited the system to be more rich. Sure, that's a huge problem, but at the same time we've basically accepted the fact that a large portion of the country is completely dependent on the rest of us to live. They have no driving force to better their lives. They have no qualms with accepting public money. In fact, they want more. And because the system is set up for the rich, the middle class ends up getting double screwed because they're forced to foot the bill without getting much of the benefit. Maybe if we reformed the advantages in the system for the rich, while at the same time maybe demanding a little bit from people that receive public assistance, the country (and government budgets) would be in even better shape. You can say EXACTLY the same thing about the top of the top of the top. Except when their fortunes are on the line, everyone in government picks up the phone. They get bailed out and lose nothing. They have probably even fewer qualms with asking the government to make sure the deck is stacked in their favor. They have absolutely no qualms accepting public money, public favors, things that can be turned into money, etc.

QUOTE (Tex @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 01:49 PM) Cut foreign dependence by 30% before 2025 and achieve having 80% of our energy from non oil sources by 2035. Not quite as stirring as Kennedy wanting a man on the moon. I happened to see McConnel on Channel One News and I find myself becoming more of a GOPerhead in this. I am starting to think that we should use our oil resources, that we are making it too difficult for companies to drill on US land or sea. And this isn't so much from an economic pov, but shouldn't we have the same environmental pain as the countries we buy from? Is it right we hide the environmental impact of our consumption by buying from other coutries? Tex, do you really think a country with 2% of the world's petroleum reserves can get by using 25% of its oil?

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 03:09 PM) The way I see it is, you can give out contracts in the $3-5 mill range easily to mediocre or even bad players (Linebrink, Teahen, etc), and an extra $4 mill into the draft each year would do wonders for the system. So eliminating one of these bad contracts can give you a better chance at stockpiling high viewed prospects which can be used to target young, good MLB players. On the other hand...if we didn't have Scott Linebrink, we wouldn't have won the division in 2008. Worth somewhere between 0.5 and 0.9 WAR depending on the system. So yeah, the contract turned out to be a bad contract. But we also won the division in game 163. That playoff appearance was easily worth several million dollars in revenue, maybe more. So, you don't sign anyone to risky contracts and plow extra money into the draft...but you also miss the playoffs by a game and lose several million in revenue. Take your pick.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 10:58 AM) No matter how you cut it, we've only made the playoffs twice in ten years. With the payroll we've had in comparison to the competition, plus the greater amount of talent we've seemingly had, it's not very good to only have two appearances. In a 5 team division with everything equal, you should make the playoffs 1 time in 5 years, 2 times in 10 years, and 3 times in 15 years. The White Sox have made the playoffs 3 times in 11 years. Yes, they're behind the Twins in that regard. They're still above average.

QUOTE (Disco72 @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 08:51 AM) So let's compound the problem of having no minor leaguers by crippling the major league roster with ineffective, injured, and expensive starters? That doesn't sound like a great plan to me. Whatever we're doing it obviously must be wrong.

QUOTE (dasox24 @ Mar 31, 2011 -> 03:22 AM) Bruce Pearl is available... I'm not an alum, and I'd chip in $20 to Illinois to see that.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 08:35 PM) Ozzie saids crap like that all of the time. At the end of the day, it took a lot for Jenks to get yanked. There's a difference for Ozzie with lefties though.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 06:22 PM) If you really want to do a tough topic, how about what you did before ESPN? Getting sports information before ESPN was next to impossible before the next morning in the paper. Goo-gooo ga ga.

QUOTE (ptatc @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 04:57 PM) This was the biggest one for me. Not just to get my PhD but also to get journal articles fro my own research. I spent countless nights and weekends in libraries finding archived articles for my research. Now you can search and save it yourself in a few hours. Think of all the hours wasted with research when I could have been drinking and getting wasted. The number of citations you need just expands to fill the time. I just spent the last hour adding 5 citations to a paper with, god, i dunno, 75 already in it, to appease a reviewer.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 05:51 PM) You do realize that the article clearly states: This is a necessary legal step before such action can take place but does not mean that it will. Newspapers sell on sensationalism, so far there is no concrete evidence that the US has actually armed the rebels (at least that I have seen as of right now). There has been talk that the US may do it. And I agree that giving out weapons is a really dangerous situation. CNN is running this right now.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 05:26 PM) A lot will have gone bad if that happens. Not necessarily. Sergio might well just pitch well enough to be moved to that spot.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 05:37 PM) Does the House actually have the ability to bypass the Senate and, presumably, Presidential signature by "decree"? no

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 05:30 PM) I love that the C.I.A is on the ground working with and arming the rebels. That kind of s*** never goes wrong!

WTF? Seriously? I could have swore someone forced us to waste a couple days in Congress reading the Constitution earlier this year.

QUOTE (elrockinMT @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 03:34 PM) I agree that it shouldn't include leaving out other teams. If you have a bias as a network for certain teams like the Red Sox and yankees then admit it and don't jerk the rest of the baseball fans around. Admitting that would be bad for business.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 04:17 PM) In essence, we're playing the role of referee to make sure this civil war doesn't get TOO out of hand. Good use of money... And to make sure that the side we want to lose doesn't win. (Btw, I beat you to the "Were considering arming the rebels" bit by 24 hours).

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 30, 2011 -> 02:18 PM) That's because there's absolutely no way that's correct. http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-ind...HW|2010|bat|AB| What I imagine these writers did was look at Kotsay's fWAR - -0.7 - his bWAR - -0.9 - and found the average of those two to, you know, make everyone happy. They then just said that he was the full-time designated hitter and didn't consider anybody else who did DH. It's not entirely flawed, because Dunn is replacing most of those ABs, but they are absolutely incorrect in their analysis. Beyond that, what's worse about them using simply WAR for DH is that it includes the fielding quotient of WAR too. Depending on who you use, Kotsay was worth -2 to -4 runs saved defensively last year, but DHs don't play the field, so that tends to work against one's argument. What would have been better was to simply say "Mark Kotsay was awful but now they have Adam Dunn so the White Sox are going to be way better" Thanks for figuring that out, I thoguht there was something wrong there.

Trouble is...you've actually outlined your parameters for victory...Quadaffi gone, some sort of burgeoning democracy in this country. You've done that in this thread. But the problem is, once you've defined that as victory, you need a mechanism to get there, and right now, it's a stalemate. The reason to ask that question is...however you define victory, you need to be able to achieve it. If "Stalemate but no more massacres" is the endgame, hell, that on its own is going to be hard to achieve, because you can't target every soldier with a machine gun from the air. If Quadaffi gone is the parameters for victory, then how do we get there from airstrikes targeting military facilities alone?

I hate having to agree with Eric Cantor.