Balta1701

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 02:27 PM) My issue is that we've set up rules for our political candidates and after the fact we want it changed for a particular candidate. Worse, we want the Supreme Court to read into the law and guess at what the legislators intended. You know what the counter-point is though...that the rules were written in a totally different era, and "inertia" is not a great legal theme.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 01:54 PM) That's expensive. It's still smarter than getting rid of unlimited plans entirely.

Really, your winter has been helped by your ownership of slaves? Well I'll be.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 02:22 PM) That has nothing to do with anything whatsoever. I don't even know why you felt it necessary to point out sex...my referral to her as he doesn't mean anything at all, it was nothing more than a generalization, which you had to latch onto to argue because you had no real argument. I don't care if its a male, female, black, white or green alien from mars...no bearing whatsoever on the conversation you utterly and completely missed. And "ideology" has nothing to do with male or female...wtf are you talking about? I think it's fairly embarrassing that you just assumed that because you were reading something written, it had to be by a male.

Anyway...I really get what the author is trying to say. In Obama's inauguration speech..."We are the people we've been waiting for" was one of the better lines. The time has come for actually solving hard problems, not putting them off. We've had 9 and a half percent unemployment for nearly a year. Wall Street is riding high while everyone else suffers. Half the world seems to be underwater. Basically every state in the union has a budget crisis. Yet, we're too scared to say anything out of the ordinary, so we call for cutting back fossil fuel subsidies (as has been done by I presume the last 30 SOTU speeches), we never name anything we actually want to cut so we take the 3 year budget freeze Obama proposed last year and make it even freeze-ier by making it last 5 years, and we call for desperately needed infrastructure investment without having any workable plan to make it happen. It's not being the people we've been waiting for.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 02:17 PM) I see the point he's attempting to make, but I feel his ideology has infected his opinion. Your ideology is showing as well, as you assumed that the author was obviously a male.

QUOTE (since56 @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 02:07 PM) I see Viciedo as 4th outfielder/dh for some other team. If they think he's being successful as a corner OF, there's no reason to trade him; the Sox could potentially use 2 of those next year.

QUOTE (Realfan @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 01:42 PM) Anyone have any idea as to what attendance level would be required to "justify" a $125MM payroll in the eyes of ownership? 2.5MM? 2.75MM? What is the all time high for Sox attendance? I'd have to guess that 2006 would be it. If you go by the Forbes numbers...last year, $120 million or so was break-even.

Not going to endorse everything in this one, and some language that is nsfw, but this read at least came close to my thoughts in a number of ways.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 11:08 AM) Maybe the more these ridiculous attempts at security come to light, the more the public will eventually throw up their hands and say enough already and force the government to stop wasting so much time/energy/money on this. What's more likely is that some other well connected contractor will come up with another idea that can have money thrown at it, and that will happen.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 09:48 AM) Give me Pujols anyday of the week. Fielder looks like he will get Carlos Lee syndrome. Here's the 2 differences...Pujols will be 32 next season, while Fielder will be 27 1/2, and Pujols may well get a contract 3-4 years longer than Fielder. That said...Pujols has been so much more consistent...I'm just not sure I'd be thrilled about spending $25 mil a year on either of them, especially if I were a national league GM.

Oh, great, the President is stalking me.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 08:42 AM) I thought the speech was "meh" as Balta put it. Mostly platitudes and flowery prose, some goals that will be nearly impossible to achieve and with no information as to how to get there, and a few actual policy statements. I've been reading up on what some of the past administrations have done regarding this speech, and its interesting how the Clinton administration (unlike most of his recent competitors) really used it as a shaping moment for their year. Rather than just doing the laundry list of cute-sounding policies and getting the President out there, they would start setting out their SOTU address in June/July of the year before, basically right after the budget fights were over. They'd start coming up with policies early, they'd start coming up with the talking points and studies on them, they'd have hearings beforehand where people would talk about those policies, then they'd use the SOTU as the crescendo to really try to force things that they wanted to happen into the budgeting process. The SOTU was sort of the focus of their policy-making year, rather than just a laundry list of whatever they're thinking about in January and a chance to change the topic for a few days. I found it equally interesting that the Clinton administration was the only one that, on average, actually received a statistical positive bounce in their poll ratings after the SOTU; most others its either negative or non-existent.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 08:33 AM) Wasn't it like 9 degrees? Why would it need ice? Warmth.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 08:29 AM) Did anybody see Joe Biden attempt to clap at a line and then realize he was the only one and tried to play it off after one clap? That was hilarious. Actually I think this was about the only :30 I tuned in for. Unless he did it more than once.

Perhaps your definition of "Nice" differs from mine.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 07:44 AM) Ahhh, the poodles are wagging their tails this morning. Meh.

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Jan 26, 2011 -> 01:23 AM) And then go after Fielder instead. Would be the smarter choice, actually. I dunno about that...they're both going to get an awful lot of money, but Pujols might well hang around playing the field for longer than Fielder, and it's a tossup which one will hold together better over the length of a contract.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Jan 25, 2011 -> 06:47 PM) He was 25 and a pro bowler when they traded for him so what are you talking about? He's now in his 5th year in the league, his 4th as a full time starter, and aside from the 76 rating from 2009 (all the INT's), he's posted a QB Rating of 86-88 in every year of his career. You really do hope that a long term, franchise level QB will take a bigger step forwards at some point (although yeah there are the qualifiers...lots of offensive coordinators, lack of protection in Chicago, the fact that he was viewed as raw coming out). It's too early to start really questioning things with him...but if there's a season next year, you'd really like to see some serious improvement from him. AN 86-88 QB rating is solidly in the middle of the pack for QB's every year, and I don't think that's what the Bears were hoping for when they traded for him.

Link

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jan 25, 2011 -> 06:19 PM) Don't forget that Cruz/Kinsler spent a considerable amount of time on the DL and Hamilton missed the last month. If they can stay reasonably healthy, I see their offense being substantially better. And it's going to have to be. As I'm not a big believer in their starting rotation after losing Lee. I didn't forget about that....OTOH...the guys who spent considerable time on the DL have a habit of spending considerable time on the DL (Hamilton and Cruz in particular). Wouldn't surprise me if they were healthier than last season, but also wouldn't surprise me if they lost any of them for a long time.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 25, 2011 -> 04:56 PM) How good is Texas' offense going to get? My goodness. Given the big advantage of the ballpark they play in, their offense wasn't actually that spectacular last year. They put up a .757 team OPS. The White Sox were right behind at a .752 OPS. They've replaced Guerrero's production with Beltre's (although you know how I feel about that), but they were still looking at having a couple of weak positions there, at 1b and at C.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jan 25, 2011 -> 04:44 PM) Napoli's a better player than Guerrero. More versatile and not too far off offensively. Plus, he's cheaper and is arb-eligible. Not sure I like the trade for Toronto. Well, this move they save a little bit of salary moving Napoli for Francisco, they put another arm in their bullpen and another option as closer (which is another guy they could trade for useful parts at the deadline), but they also keep the path clear for J.P. Arencebia, who they clearly want as their starting C this year.