Balta1701

QUOTE (knightni @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 06:29 PM) The Packers will abandon their running game by the second half and just use slants and deep passing to try and exploit the Bears' secondary. I think the Bears would be thrilled if that happened.

Much longer article on this subject

QUOTE (knightni @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 06:10 PM) Thank about it. Why would they want the media hanging over them all year? "Are you going to re-sign Ozzie? "Is this Ozzie's last year?" "Are you not extending Ozzie because of Oney's Tweeting?" - Incessantly repeated over and over from Spring Training through September. Now, if they want to let Ozzie go after 2011, they can without questions and just pay him for 2012. Frankly, yes, I'd want the media hanging all over him this year.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 06:10 PM) And the bad Jay, good Jay comes from reality. Yes, his receivers aren't the greatest, but at the same time, he makes passes that make you go "WTF?" and it's not because the receiver ran the wrong route or the game dictated it. For example, the near pick he threw last week against the Seahawks in the end zone. He already started running backwards because he knew that was an awful pass. I don't recall where but I believe I read that the video shows a receiver ran totally the wrong route and that was a timing pattern/throw.

Boo.

Oh great, now another person wants us to switch back to the Gould standard.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 05:55 PM) Now, that said, if what you said about this supposed "kicker" of yours is true, we should see drastic deficit decreases beginning next year AND in the years to come, in addition to outstanding debts being paid off. So now, how much would you like to bet neither happen? IF they don't hold to a 2% year over year increase, then it sure won't.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 06:02 PM) They were trying to sell tickets all of the way up until today. I don't think they made it. You know full well that at optimum price levels you don't sell out every ticket. You just get really close ;-)

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 05:55 PM) Same for us with two kids. Utterly ridiculous and we haven't gone since. It's not ridiculous if they can sell the tickets. Supply and demand.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 05:48 PM) Not that surprising. When you have that type of length and athleticism and a defensive-minded coach it's to be expected. Although I will admit I didn't realize, according to BBR, of course, that they were that much better than everybody else. If they can get everybody healthy...that's what will be the difference between them and the Jazz in the postseason.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 19, 2011 -> 11:44 AM) Durbin and Kirk will sit together, and some others are signing on as well. This SOTU layout on the floor will look much different than in times past. That's a solid rant.

Guess which team Basketball-Reference.com thinks has the best defense in the NBA (By far)?

Um, yay?

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 05:28 PM) Wrong people, wrong mission. They were not doing what I am describing, exactly. I know their mission was technically different...but frankly, it shouldn't have been. If you're going to propose a "Deficit commission", that's exactly what it ought to do.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 04:58 PM) I was clearly stating that it hadn't been done in any large scale, but that ObamaCo did that relatively small thing. Not sure how that was unclear. In that large post, I was trying to say that "Bringing in an outside group to try to audit the government or to deal with the deficit" is something we actually just tried, with the joke that was the deficit commission, and it wound up caring a lot more about upper class tax cuts than the deficit.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 04:31 PM) How is this related at all? The % across the board cut is a proposal, not an actual line by line cut that Obama clearly did not do, despite what you provided. If you guys get to pretend fantasy cuts are possible, why can't I?

Let's note that J4L is probably right on 1 thing...this Bulls team as it currently stands is not not getting the production it needs out of the SG spot. Between constantly playing down 1 big man and having no starting SG, they're basically playing 3 starters against the other team's starting lineup. Hell, 2 starters this week with both Boozer and Noah out. This not only really hurts the effectiveness of the starters, but it weakens the bench as well; there hasn't been a time all season where there's been a legitimate 2nd unit or where Deng has been able to get a break. That has hurt Deng's effectiveness as well, since he's had to pull so many minutes to fill in on the frontcourt and to guard guys like Nowitzki. With how this season is evolving, so far it looks almost criminal to not make a move to do something about the SG slot before the deadline. Beyond that, if the frontcourt ever gets healthy, Deng should come out more rested and more effective, the starting lineup should get more effective, and the 2nd unit should get stronger.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 03:56 PM) Yeah I see a couple hundred million in "line by line" savings and the rest just government BS. 40 billion reduction in contract bids? Any way to actually verify that? No more than there is to verify that a 20% across the board budget cut actually happened.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 03:39 PM) I don't think he's actually that good and that his name will be brought up less and less as time goes by. I believe he's mainly here because of his brother. Well of course...he was a Boras client at the time he was drafted, he'd fallen very far because no one was going to draft him in the 2nd or 3rd round and give him 1st round money. The Sox finally felt they had an opportunity when day 2 of the draft rolled around, and they thought they could get him signed because of his brother.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 01:28 PM) I really don't get why everyone (nationally) is dismissing the Bears. Yeah, they've been a bit of an enigma all season and yeah, the Packers have been playing very well in the playoffs. Everyone was going to dismiss the Bears. The Bears haven't had the big offensive showy wins that other teams have had, and its those big scoring wins that always sell the media on how good your team is, not winning games by defense. The Bears don't have a guy who is believed (yet) to be a top of the league QB. And the Bears have missed the playoffs a few years in a row.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 12:29 PM) the real kicker is they are not cutting spending, they decided they will actually increase spending 2% a year. The real kicker is that effectively holding spending growth at 2% a year IS actually a spending cut in a growing economy.

I have a feeling we're going to hear an awful lot about "Tax reform" in the SOTU.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 03:19 PM) He did? Yeah, they cut about $17 billion in year over year savings by doing so. Here's the press release version.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 03:31 PM) The disagreement is exactly why an outside party should do this - and one from business, not government. And they can be asked to provide a range of solutions for each problem, leaving Congress with some wriggle room. This will never happen of course, but IMO its the best course of action. The problem is...we kind of actually saw that last year, with the joke that was the deficit commission. What we got was, however, not a workable plan for deficit reduction. It had the magic joke of "Limiting health care costs to 1% a year" built into it, just like this concept we're discussing pretends to do. What we got instead was a plan for how to cut the top tier tax rate from 35 to 21% while making up for it with tax increases on everyone else. Why did we get that? Because the people who wrote the plan were people who would benefit enormously from that change in tax policy, so they wrote a plan that would make them a fortune and have everyone else pay for it. The idea of an outside party sounds nice...but there's a reason why this game is hard...not only do you have to find a way to satisfy the interests of the people in Congress, but you also have to have people who don't automatically put forwards a plan that would help their own pocketbooks at the expense of everyone else.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jan 21, 2011 -> 02:14 PM) Raising the IL taxes by 70% during a recession isn't a good idea either, but they did that...while telling us they're actually INCREASING spending. You know what might have helped? Increased federal aid to the states. Oh, wait...