Balta1701

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 03:00 PM) A good way to kill time is to play scrabble on facebook. Balderdash. That could either be a response to your statement or an alternative word game, take your pick.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 03:00 PM) If you re-read my plan, you will see that's not possible. You've left open direct individual contributions to candidates on the order of thousands of dollars per year. Then you just get your 100 highly paid execs in a room with 15 candidates and it's all the same to me. Did I miss something else?

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 03:13 PM) who was the war paralyzed senator from GA, that was getting nailed with attack ads calling him un-American? Senator Chambliss ran that ad against Max Cleland.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 02:24 PM) Game 2. Augh, my mind crossed up game 2 and October 23.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 02:22 PM) How much influence does $87.5 million buy? Way too much.

The major media don't seem to be running with it just yet, but a suspicious white powder package was received by the offices of Congressman Raul Grivjala's office. It was tested and the leaks to people in the know suggest it is a legitimately toxic chemical. The Congressman is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

I was waiting for game 3 to note the line that has remained in my signature for 5 years.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 12:10 PM) You would think that Fridays are the most enjoyable weekday, but I almost never have a lot of work on Friday and they just drag on and on. I have no idea how to entertain myself. Zibib may be a good solution to your problems.

My big beef with NSS's concept is that I think it's a bandaid over the real problem. Every time I come back to this issue I give the same response and nothing has changed. If I'm a business or group, let's call me the United Auto Sachs in the Citi, and I do business with the government in any way, through regulation or contracting. If the cost of an election is significantly less than the amount I'd gain by a contract or by a favorable law, then it makes sense for me to spend whatever it takes to win that election. If I'm a bank and I think that disclosure requirements will cost me $10 billion over a 4 year period, and I dump $100 million into making sure that no politicians who support that bill wind up winning, I come out up 99%. If I'm a defense contractor and the government is buying my $1 billion planes, how much would I spend to make it so that politicians stay in office who want to buy 50 more of those? A billion? A couple billion? If I'm a union and I want to unionize Walmart, and I can get a bill passed to make it easy for me to do so, how many billions in additional revenue for the union have I just come up with? As long as you have privately financed campaigns, you have an inherently corrupt system.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 11:14 AM) The crazy thing is that Toronto has been there almost a generation now. They came in 1995. But the league's numbers actually reflect that. Googling the franchise value puts the Raptors in the top 15 of total franchise value. Their revenue situation has remained strong. Their financial situation has actually improved relative to the rest of the league over the past 5 years. We immediately think of them as contraction candidates because they haven't made significant steps towards building a winning team, they lose the superstars they do get, and when they go out on the FA market it's for obvious mistakes like Turkoglu. But at least from the balance sheet point of view, they should be no where near the top of the contraction pile. The teams at the bottom of the list are teams like the Grizzlies, the Bucks, the Hornets, and the Nets (and the Nets were just sold for about 1/2 of the Forbes appraised value of the Raptors to a Mad Russian Billionaire.)

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 09:46 AM) The same would need to be said, probably tenfold, for Sale. The one good half-year out of the pen doesn't even mean he'll see the same success in a relief role next year- let alone thrive as a starter. However...at some point, we're going to have to try him there, and in the big leagues. It's the only way we'll know. We could try him there in the minors next year, but let's be honest, they're not going to hit him in AAA if he brings anything to the table like what he brought to the bigs this year. That's the catch 22 with young guys. They're cheap and therefore necessary, but they're no where near a sure thing, you don't know what you're going to get unless you try, and if you don't try your team is either going to get really expensive or break apart in FA.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 10:46 AM) That whole expanding into Canada idea worked out splendidly. You gotta wonder what the other variables to play with there could have been. Neither of those teams have made a legitimate championship run. Both have had players screw them over completely (Hi Vince!). If the NBA weren't such a star-dominated league or if the NBA's CBA had recognized that in some other way, they might have had more of a chance to grow organically into the population. If you're expanding, you ought to probably think of it as a 30 year process, where the team goes through 2 stadiums, probably more than 1 ownership group, and has a full opportunity to integrate itself into the area. Otherwise you're going after quick returns that might disappear very rapidly.

If I got to start from scratch, ignore that pesky first amendment, and ignore the fact that corporations are people too, here's mine. Fully publicly financed system. Set up in a way such that the Republicans constantly get angry that so many tax dollars are wasted on it. Every bloody expense ought to be covered for major candidates. There would have to be some floor to reach to gain access, whether it's 10% in a certain set of polls or for the same party in the previous election, whatever. That's probably the trickiest part; figuring out a way for a challenger to qualify for funds without having Basil Marceaux.com spending $200 million on presidential ads. I don't want anyone running for Congress or the White House to have to raise money. Ever. The amount spent per year should go up at above the rate of inflation, since it's doing that anyway. No one should lose an election because they're outspent. If a private individual wants to spend their own fortune on ads for a race I wouldn't stop them, but I'd say that you can't contribute more than $10k-ish of your own personal funds to a race while still accepting the federal funds...and if you tried to outspend your opponent, the federal funds going to your opponent should increase. If a private corporation wants to run an issue ad, they shouldn't be able to mention a party or candidate by name at any point after that candidate has launched an officially recognized campaign. Doing so is an outside contribution-in-kind. If the NRA wanted to run ads in October saying "support candidates this fall who oppose registration of handguns" with no names attached and no party attached...I'm sorta ok with that but I worry that I've left a loophole.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 09:15 AM) Or the President refused to release the names of all of his donors... Actually that's a great comparison of how it's different. And you can use that line you employed previously to pretend that $20 million buys the same amount of influence as $25, feel free, I'll let other people judge the validity of that logic. That's what you're standing behind; $15,000 and $199 contributions are exactly the same.

BTW, even if the Chamber behind the scenes is absolutely 100% on the spot, keeping foreign dollars only used for business promotion overseas...if a Democratic 527 was spending $70 million + on attack ads, you'd be absolutely outraged.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 09:05 AM) Its all conjecture and hearsay. Honestly it is similar to what the birthers have. It's a fun game you get to play. The Supreme Court makes it 100% impossible to come up with definitive evidence of where the COC gets its money. I can point out in a fair amount of detail that the COC is active in fundraising overseas, and that the money goes into the same account. You then say "you have no evidence". Well of course I have no evidence that meets your standard. You've stated that the only evidence that counts is the kind I'm forbidden from getting. To use your standard...it'd be like the Congress and President passed a federal law banning anyone from obtaining birth certificates from Hawaii issued before 1970.

If I were a Heat fan, I wouldn't call where they're sitting right now an auspicious start. (Of course, I'd say the same thing about the Bulls this year having lost Boozer, and I'd have said the same thing about the Bulls last year when Rose got hurt).

QUOTE (maggsmaggs @ Oct 22, 2010 -> 08:48 AM) Huet got the shaft big time. In the NHL, you can't renegotiate contracts so he couldn't have given money back stay with the Hawks or go to another NHL team for less. If you really look at it, the Hawks really just screwed him big time. Kinda feel bad for him. Yeah, I know he is making a ton of money, but still the principles involved here are preyty bush. And yet, something tells me he won't be out on the forefront of the union the next time the NHL CBA comes up, saying "we need players to be able to reduce their contracts mid-contract to stay in the league!".

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 07:51 PM) Exactly zero evidence. It's not enough for a conviction, but it'd be enough to get a subpoena if it was actually illegal any more.

Main actors for "The Hobbit" announced.

Why isn't Ozzie coaching his team! THat lazy SOB!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 06:54 PM) The Aaron Rowand trade? He traded him after a off year for Jim Thome, a guy he basically promised Konerko. The thread which you have posted in is John Danks trade ideas and the original poster had a trade idea. You wish not to comment again so you can play either side. I then asked if you would make that proposed trade or the one posted all over this board, the Rasmus, again, no answer. But why trade for Fielder? If its all about budget he's more expensive in 2011 then he's definitely gone. Gonzalez you have for a bargain rate for one year, then he's gone, and I doubt SD would trade Gonzalez for a guy who will actually be more expensive than him next year and they have control of for only one more after that. Perhaps some 3 way, but 2 years of Danks is better than 1 year of Gonzalez IMO. Maybe it would be something to consider if the White Sox knew without a doubt Danks wasn't going to sign or what he's even asking for, as I have never seen anything published other than he rejected the same deal Floyd took. So you don't really know how difficult he will be to extend, and the Sox have a recent history of extending fairly expensive pitchers. I mentioned Garcia, Buerhle, Contreras, they also extended Vazquez. I don't understand why you and a lot of other posters think Danks is automatically gone in 2 years. The White Sox love him, which is something I have going for me, because I don't want him traded, and they won't trade him. At least this offseason. If it was D1 straight up for Fielder or Gonzalez, no I wouldn't do it either. That might make us barely better in 2011 but it makes us worse in 2012, and it could well make us worse in 2011 by hurting the budget. However, you start talking about Danks for Rasmus, and you've got me interested. You start moving around additional chips in a Fielder or Gonzalez deal, maybe I'm still interested. And you want the best evidence possible that the Sox think there's a good chance that Danks leaves? They already drafted his replacement.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 06:39 PM) I have exactly as much evidence as you do when you claim foreign donations are paying for these commercials. Actually the fact that the COC receives a large amount of funding from foreign sources is 100% well established. They schedule and hold public events all over the world. The Chamber's own websites list foreign dues paying companies as members. Would you like to join the U.S.-Bahrain cooperative of the COC? Here's the form. The only question is how strictly you want to apply bookkeeping rules. The money for tax purposes all goes into the same 501©6 account which does not disclose its contributors and out of which has come $70 million in campaign expenditures for this year. ABC

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 21, 2010 -> 06:25 PM) This is ironic considering all of the scare stuff you post about people on the other side of the aisle. I think it's interesting to note that the statement of Chairperson Harkin doesn't even endorse the position he's supposed to ram through during a lame duck session and calls for more hearings covering the full next year.