Balta1701

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 03:03 PM) Carolina is just bad real bad. At least they've tried in this game.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 02:54 PM) I think it's more because "Demorcratic" has a positive connotation; it is evoking thoughts of our system of democracy, whereas "democrat" evokes thoughts of the actual party. Actually, it's the sound that the word ends with. Say it to yourself, "Dem-o-Crat", you almost have to push it out hard, while you have to move your voice back up to add the extra soft "ic" at the end. It's one of those classic, focus group response monitoring tricks.

xiphosuran meat is probably delicious as well.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 02:49 PM) The Democrat party has no one to blame but themselves for making 'Democrat' a bad word. I'm not sure how they could have convinced people to spell or pronounce it a certain way in the 1700's in anticipation of the fact that the sharp t sound at the end would become a means of adding a negative connotation to words in 225 years later.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 02:29 PM) Boise probably could have put up a better fight than half of the teams in the Big Ten yesterday. Michigan and MSU didnt even belong on the same field. I don't think anyone could disagree with that.

If we're looking for where the Sox are going to get the money to pay for this team, the answer is right in the numbers. According to Forbes, the Sox have one of the lowest debt loads of any team in baseball, and the Sox have been a profitable team the last 2 years. Solidly profitable in fact, in the top 10 of the league, when you consider the lack of obligations. Adding $20+ million to the payroll will eat away a large chunk of that...however, the Sox have also achieved that profitability with a shrinking attendance base, no playoff revenue, and with an ascendant team on the north side. The Sox can probably absorb what they've already spent without any additional ticket sales, thanks to ad sale growth now that we're out of the recession. The real missing ingredient though is the 10,000+ empty seats per game. We've had attendance slowly eroding for the last 5+ years. Staying in the race the whole season, hopefully while getting off to a good start, will fill some of those seats. Beyond that, a single home playoff game is likely worth >$1 million in revenue. In 2006, the Sox were in a situation where they were probably pretty close to maximizing their potential revenue. 2007 really hurt, and then the ascendant Cubs combined with lackadasical Sox teams and a financial crisis really hurt as well. Now, the Sox can be an ascendant team again...and they're no where close to maximizing their potential revenue.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 02:17 PM) Everyone is waiting for Pavano to sign, then the dominos will start falling again. The other part of that is...the obvious landing place if it wasn't for history for Pavano would be the Yankees, and that would probably already be done. But no one really knows how to evaluate the market for him without the Yankees involved, and so that makes all the other #4 starting pitchers able to say that the Yankees have interest.

Allow me to try to rephrase that and elaborate on it. Kap's original question was something along the lines of "When does the spending stop". If you gave me infinite control over the Federal budget for a few years to set spending priorities, where would things end up? Well, they wouldn't wind up back at the Eisenhower, 90% top tier tax rates, there's no need for that. You'd wind up with healthy boosts for research spending (duh), a similar boost for education at all levels, boosts in enforcement of safety regulations and corporate enforcement, and probably a 1-2% of GDP a year infrastructure spending boost to catch up on the 30 year gap in that we have. Even without having me cut anything, if you gave me everything I want, even with the current deficit, we'd barely need more than the end of the Bush/Obama tax cuts to pay for it. On top of that, I'd wind up finding things I'd want to cut; backing off on the defense spending boom, backing off on the Homeland Security spending boom, etc. (And of course, that doesn't even count the fact that I'd save us a couple trillion a year by magically implementing France's health care system here.) We're not arguing here about the difference between 75% tax rates and 25% tax rates. If you gave me everything I wanted, I could probably do it on the Clinton-era tax rates with a few tax loophole closures, or just with a quality health care system. There's no push to spend the moon just because spending is always good.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) For example I just test drove an 09 SUV that was down over 20k from its sticker price when it was new. That to me screams value. There's a combination of reasons why that vehicle is down in value though. First of all, it's a 2009 SUV. 2009 wasn't exactly a banner year for auto sales, so people and places that bought them were doing so either on discounts or with an assist from the government. Second, SUV's, at least up until the real energy price spike, have had the largest built-in profit margins on their list prices out of any vehicle type. Third, the indications are that there is another energy price spike building right now, and therefore, anyone holding an SUV for the next few months might take a larger loss on it than if they offered a bigger discount right now.

A decent chunk of the answer comes about in what kind of vehicle you're interested in as well.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 01:54 PM) Looks like the Bears game won't mean much. Atlanta's destroying Carolina. I wouldn't call this "Destroying" just yet. Atlanta's gambled a couple times to put it away and lost on those gambles.

An area the size of Texas is under water in Australia.

Caron Butler has a torn patella tendon and is probably out about 2 months (Mavericks)

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 01:44 PM) Yeah, that was a thing of beauty. The other thing is the safety came over but got inexplicably turned around and took himself out of the play. Good news for you, the Browns don't care about winning this game. They just proved it with that field goal; Mangini just didn't want the shutout on his record for the year.

Roethlisberger might well have uncorked the best throw I've seen all year to start off that game.

QUOTE (Tex @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 01:34 PM) If you play for the Sox, you have to expect your worst moments / secrets to be shared with the world. Or, you keep your mouth shut after you leave.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Jan 1, 2011 -> 10:04 PM) because they know Democrats hate it. haha. Because polling data actually shows it has more of a negative connotation.

Very good Chicago-style

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 01:31 PM) And the market has borne that out over recent history. Once the new year hits, the money starts dropping quickly. I think Jhonny Damon is a decent comparable, for how things went last year. He held out and wasn't getting good offers in December, but around the end of January, the teams who wanted to compete but were missing a DH started getting in on him, rather than getting stuck going into the season with something worthless as their everyday DH.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 2, 2011 -> 03:38 AM) Five million? If he's that highly thought of, why hasn't somebody in need gobbled him up? Because the market for middle to back of the rotation starters doesn't dry up early in FA, it probably gets stronger later in FA once the high-priced options are off the market and teams start realizing that they don't have enough pitching.

Well, that's going all-in.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 1, 2011 -> 08:43 PM) Well something woke them up. Tonight appears from the stats to be one of the every-few-weeks "oh crap Luol Deng is making all his shots" games.

I am dizzy, I'll agree with that.

Go suck a....Donkey?

Eep...little bit of a low blow there.