Balta1701

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:13 PM) Outrageous. Perhaps we can find an effective outlet for your outrage.

Switching topics again...I'm starting to think that the foreclosure fraud issue poses a much bigger systemic economic risk than I would have thought a few weeks ago.

QUOTE (thxfrthmmrs @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 05:43 PM) the fans vote the starting guards, who would they vote for? wade and joe johnson? nah dont think JJ is as popular and fun to watch as Rose. Rose would definitely get voted in. Rondo.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 05:25 PM) Was Obama's contributions documented? Yes. An FEC complaint was filed by the RNC. The Obama and McCain campaigns both made some effort to avoid things that would be contributions in kind (i.e. merchandise sales) overseas without verification using a U.S. passport number. Both sides did make efforts to return contributions that were proven to be from overseas. I have no idea what happened on the FEC complaint; it seems it made a very, very brief appearance (it was a news story October 5th-7th 2008 on Fox, Breitbart, and various other right-leaning sites) and then was never heard from again.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 04:44 PM) Publish or perish. Same holds true for your research. If you start off to prove climate change is real, you had better do that or you can kiss your grant money goodbye. No incentive there to fudge data, forget about those few reporting station over there, make a program to interpret the data that has formulas inside it that would make a programmers head explode, but give you the results you want and/or attack the character of anyone that speaks out against you instead of what they are speaking about. Really...that's not how it is at all. There are literally millions of dollars out there for people who have other explanations for the current temperature rise other than anthropogenic CO2 emissions to go out and test their theories, regardless of whether or not 99% of their colleagues scoff at them. Can cite a personal example here. We had a climate denier give a talk at my last institution a few years ago about his idea that cosmic rays and the earth's position relative to the rest of the galaxy exerts a controlling influence on climate. No one who knows anything about astrophysics, climate, or cosmic rays legitimately believes this effort. However, he's running a project funded to the tune of $10 million+ from the German government (he was from Germany) to test that idea. That's a huge grant for any country. And that doesn't even begin to mention industry. Really...now that I have a Ph.D. in geosciences, if I wanted to come out as a climate denier and do nothing but go to an institution like the ones Exxon casually funds under the table, go on TV, and go around giving climate denier talks, I could make a very exceptional living at it. I wouldn't have to publish a thing.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 04:29 PM) You may only see one if you have your head buried in the sand. I don't deny the fact that there are some changes noted. I dispute the severity of them and the honesty of most of the people delivering them. Too many agendas and too much money involved. Yet you seem to not see, or care, that many of the most vocal proponents for your position either lied, exagerated or rellied on data that was not entirely accurate, and what is worse, don't care that they did so. I found this an interesting read. http://my.telegraph.co.uk/reasonmclucus/re...ysical-society/ Here's an interesting read on that resignation. Our response to your point is yeah...a handful of papers have gotten things wrong. We've backtracked on about 3 things out of many thousands of pages in the IPCC report. Basically 3 paragraphs out of thousands. Too much money involved? You apply that standard to the side that says climate change is real but you don't acknowledge that there's a fair amount of money devoted to making it look like climate change is up for debate. Which has more money, the National Science Foundation or Exxon? I could go on but I have other stuff to do.,

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 04:20 PM) I forgot, he walks on water and shoot pixie dust out his ass, heals the sick, has no evil bones in his body and makes women faint in his mere presence. Ok, we've had some heated discussion in here today on issues, but this is crossing the line. Everyone needs to cool it now.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 04:03 PM) ANd yet he is saying 'I don't have to prove thier guilt, they have to prove thier innocence'. I wonder who is next on the Obama admin hit list. He is making Nixon's enemies list look weak by comparrison. Going to go down as the most petty President in history. Let me turn it around and ask you this question; why should anyone be able to keep their funding sources on a U.S. political campaign secret? Is that not an area that a priori we'd expect that openness would be a good thing and secrecy would almost always be a bad thing?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:42 PM) To be fair, he did correctly characterize them as whackjobs, but the comparison to questions regarding the US Chamber of Commerce funding is weak. There is ample evidence that Obama was and is a US citizen, but we have no indication of where the CoC funds are from. Actually, we have a very strong indication that the CoC gets money from overseas to run some portion of its operations. It holds fundraisers overseas, even in places like Dubai, and has corporate members who operate solely overseas. The question is not where it gets its money, we already know it gets money from overseas...the question is how it is bookkeeping its money; if its raising money overseas and using that money to run its operations, and that step frees up domestically raised money to be contributed to a campaign.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:28 PM) We won a World Series and nothing like that ever happened. Our total payroll in 2005 was $75 million. By 2006, it was up around $100 million depending on how you count the money coming from the Phils and D-Backs. By 2007, it was $108 on paper, and 2008 it was $120 on paper.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:25 PM) What? I didn't adpot a talking point, I specifically and clearly brought up the talking point versions of both extremes, and said that in a vacuum, each is silly. The only ones spreading misinformation are you and anyone else characterizing my words as something they were clearly not. Why is it so damn hard for people to understand being reasonable on this topic? Because you and I have very different definitions of what is reasonable here.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:19 PM) You are really arguing with the "do nothing" and "it doesn't exist" crowd, not me. I'm aware of that...but the reason I chimed in on this is that I read through the discussion and saw you specifically adopting one of their talking points in the bolded text without noting why it is invalid. That's how misinformation spreads.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 03:08 PM) Absolutely assinine that this is in the news. But, you have to rally the base somehow, despite how patently dishonest and slimy you look. Did you just become a birther?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 02:58 PM) "stop ruining the environment" isnt a valid rejection of "it will cost too much". I think that is what nss is trying to say. Let me see if I can articulate the disconnect here and why it is frustrating the "damnit do something!" side here. I want to highlight a few bits of this post in particular. QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 10:39 AM) This drives me nuts on this topic. You have a significant portion of the GOP who has decided its good policy to bury their head in the sand and not only ignore the consequences of not acting, but just plain ignoring the reality of it even existing. Then on the other side, you have the environmental lobby choosing to ignore the fact that this country is already in difficult financial position, and that spending a trillion dollars on getting everything done they want to isn't a realistic option. Clearly, action is needed. Clearly, this money would be better use of capital and capitol than many other things we spend money on. And, clearly, we can't fix the whole world, nor can we even fix ourselves all at once. Now, there are 2 problems here with the statement I've bolded that should be challenged specifically. First and foremost...the science tells us that there are going to be massive climactic issues in every country, not just the united states. A person who states that spending a trillion dollars on solving this problem is a rough decision is correct. However...the counterpoint is that choosing to do nothing on the problem does not equal choosing to spend nothing. Quoting a trillion dollar cost to doing something is a strong argument for doing nothing, but that is only the case if the cost for doing nothing is also zero. Between changing rain patterns, droughts, sudden inabilities to grow crops, massive losses of habitats and biodiversity, hell even small things like "all of the water here is too hot for me to use to cool my nuclear reactor any more"...the losses associated with Climate change are potentially at least the same order of magnitude as the costs associated with fixing the problem. The costs of fixing it are huge. The costs of doing nothing are equally huge and cannot be neglected in this discussion. The country is in a difficult financial position yes...so why are we prepared to spend hundreds billions of dollars on disaster recovery and potentially trillions on adapting our society? The answer is...the status quo is assumed to cost nothing, and this is simply untrue. Second...the other implicit assumption is that the costs of doing something, especially in the short term, are high. Study after study shows that there is still significant low-hanging fruit, in terms of energy efficiency, that could be brought online right now that would actually save people and businesses money over the next 10 years. That's the other reason why my side gets frustrated when people talk about the cost of solving climate change; the other side doesn't get frustrated by wasting money on energy in a dozen different ways, but gets extremely angry when the government steps in to try to do something about that waste.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 02:42 PM) Losers quit posting in cool threads... Maybe some of the losers wanted to continue posting but were waiting on some of the winners to start off with a K. Wait, who did I just insult?

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 12:12 PM) Thats a good question. In the Braves defense, they did make the WS 4 out of the first 5 playoff trips. Once the division series started, they won that round 5 straight years too. They at least were winning playoff series, Gardenhire is having difficulty winning single playoff games. That being said, Cox has lost 8 of his last 9 playoff series and hasnt made the NLCS since 2001, but you never really hear about that. My answer there is that even though Cox's teams were winning those divisions post 2002, those were the years that their pitchers started to get up in age, when Larry was 30 years old, when Klesko had already left, FA was starting to take its toll on the talent that had come up in the 90's, Smoltz was 34 and was in the bullpen, Maddux was 35 and his Cy Young streak was over, and thanks to the miracles of chemistry there were other spectacles to behold. Basically...his teams were still good enough to make the playoffs, but they just weren't dominant teams any more.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 11:32 AM) Two years ago, Circuit City had a good deal on flat screens. At the time, I lived just down the road from one. I slept in pretty late and the deal was only supposed to go through 12:00 p.m., but I decided to go when I woke up closer to 2:00. There were still a good amount of TV's and I got one, but that's my only experience of shopping after Thanksgiving. It depends on the TV/computer. The electronics stores tend to have different levels of sale. There will be a group of top-level items, like a loaded laptop for $250 or the ultimate TV package, that they'll have maybe a dozen or a few dozen on hand for. They do that because the top level sale is what draws in the lines. The people who get there 4 days in advance and camp outside are there for those sales. They're the ones that get on the news. All that publicity is good. They do this in particular with new items that may not have a lot of supply...the Wii, for example, took forever to have enough units to meet demand, so when that first 10 were gone, they were gone. Washer/dryer combos fit this category as well. Those items are usually marked in the ad, it will say "Minimum 10 units available per store". However, the store doesn't want the 25th person in line to come in, see that the #1 tv deal is gone, and just walk out the door and tell everyone in the line "everything's gone you can go home now", so they'll load their stockrooms to the brim with a quality deal on different models of laptops, TV's, whatever. Those may or may not carry the "minimum x units per store" line, because they still want people to come in early to grab them rather than buying something later in the day at a competitor. They will be the ones that are offered until noon, or with a special rebate, whatever. They want you in their store and they want you actually to spend money on those items, so they won't run out of them until late in the day, and they'll be more flexible on the deadlines until they clear that merchandise out.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 10:34 AM) Google invests 37.5% stake in wind power conveyance line on eastern seaboard, a line that will allow power balancing and delivery that is enough to power 1.3 million homes. Google sees the future here, apparently. This would never have happened had Cape Wind not been approved. Less than 6 months after approval of that project Google is jumping in. The regulatory issues are such a hurdle here, this is what happens when 1 hurdle is crossed. Especially when that hurdle is such obvious B.S.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 12, 2010 -> 08:43 AM) This is all very interesting, but, you are focusing on only half my post. Well, its the wordier half, so its more like two thirds, but the point is, you are pretty much ignoring my comments about UE and GDP numbers. The demand side, I didn't go into as much detail, because I thought the point was actually simpler. How many shrimp boats is the lowered demand worth? And how far beyond that will the initial reaction go, causing the inevitable bounce? Which other boats will decide to take advantage of the overcorrection that always occurs? And what makes you think that you need an increase in demand to cause more competition? Or, what makes you think that aggressive plays in the market mean increasing output? You'll have competition in either case. However, in the case of the depressed-supply market, moves to increase market share are expansionary. If I want to increase my market share in that case, I expand. I produce more of my product because I'm able to sell more of it. That involves investing in something to improve my business, I can't just rest on my laurels. If I start aggressively cost-cutting, it can go in the wrong direction by decreasing quality at a time when consumers are able to spend. That's an inflationary move. If I take an inflationary move by aggressively expanding in a demand-constrained market, I'm going to wind up wasting my investment. We have the capacity to create as many houses and cars as we could in 2007, and we have as many or more hotel rooms, service locations, etc. But now, if I want to expand my market share by building another factory, I build that factory and everything it produces sits there unsold. I open a giant new Vegas hotel and 2/3 of the rooms sit there empty unless I start aggressively cutting prices. I might increase market share but I've killed profit margins and I'm just playing for survival...and now every one of my competitors is forced to cut their prices to try to avoid losing market share. It's deflationary, and it pushes job losses throughout. The trap comes if those job losses then start forcing further cuts to avoid continuing market share declines; that's the deflationary spiral. We've managed to avoid the spiral so far by putting enough people back to work with the stimulus package that we stopped losing huge numbers of jobs; it did exactly what it was supposed to do at its size, prevent everything from spiraling down. But there's still a huge output gap, there is still huge unemployed capacity, and there is still a hugely depressed demand side that isn't going to be solved until people have money to spend.

The Giants interrupting their celebration on the Braves field to give a salute to Bobby Cox? Totally awesome.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 11, 2010 -> 02:56 PM) I'll try an illustration... 50 shrimp boats in the harbor. Conditions start to deteriorate - lowered demand and/or poor conditions for fishing, doen't matter - and boats start to close up shop. The boats able to survive, in the short term, tend to play it careful, just waiting it out and trying to survive. But as more boats fail, you essentially create opportunity. Some of those surviving boats will start to make aggressive plays for more of the market share, because even when things are bad, there is still demand for shrimp, and capitalism still dictates competition to survive and thrive. This happens in every economic cycle, macro to the US or even specific to an industry. And when interest rates are insanely low, and labor easy to come by, you strike. Now, remember, we're talking 9.7% UE core, or 17% UE total. A healthy economy might be 7-8% core and 14% total, and a very healthy one at 5% and 12% or the like. So we're talking a band of 2 to 4% between current and fairly healthy. How many shrimp boats is that? And how many have already closed up shop? Not everyone will stay on the sidelines untul 2016, which would be 9 years of recession. You know, the more I thought about this post last night, the more I wanted to make an example of it...because I think it illustrates very well exactly the thinking of our political class right now and why the politicians have chosen to allow us to stay in this hole rather than get out of it; they're unable to think about anything but the supply side. Take your specific example...boats starting to close up shop. There is a huge difference between lowered demand and poor fishing conditions because the response is totally different. If the fishing conditions are poor and that is what has lowered demand, that is in essence a business problem; business has used its resources inefficiently and things need to be repurposed. Customers still have money to spend but they're choosing to spend it elsewhere. This is a supply side issue. This is more like the 2001 Recession. Consumer spending continued increasing through the full 2001 recession despite an increase in unemployment...the thing that decreased significantly was business investment. The solution on that issue is to help business repurpose itself. Fishing conditions have deteriorated? Well, either the government can step in and help clean up the oil that has ruined the fishing, or the Fed can create conditions such that it's cheap enough for the business to invest in new ways of producing non-oil-soaked fish. Business tax credits can make a dent here. Job training programs can make a dent. Better regulation can make a dent. In that case...it does exactly what you said; the better prepared companies will eventually find a way to make moves for increased market share, and those moves are inflationary; they buy out their competitors, or they invest in a larger fishing fleet. Eventually if you keep the business credits running, you push on the inflation button; that is 2006. On the other hand...if the problem is that their customers saw 1/3 of their wealth evaporate in the space of a few months and therefore stopped buying the product...no amount of supply-side intervention will do anything. If you offer business tax credits for expansion, cut the capital gains tax, and put more money in the hands of the wealthy, what can they do with it? If they invest in new ways to produce fish, it doesn't matter, because that doesn't make their customers able to buy anything else. They might invest some of it while investment is cheap, but they're going to be cautious because they won't know when their customers will return. The only way for them to truly make a move for market share is to make a deflationary move. They need to cut costs to undercut their competitors, or they need to increase the quality of what they're offering without increasing the price. So they cut half their staff and run their boats out there with skeleton crews, losing a little production but pushing prices down. Or they invest in a fancy new GPS system, but then they use that increase in productivity to cut back on employees. Neither of those efforts are inflationary. Our government is so used to thinking about big business that the sensible center has no means to deal with a collapse on the demand side. The solution to every problem previously is tax cuts and business investment credits. Eventually maybe business comes up with a super new technology that drags you out of that hole (solar panels on the ships!), but that's a roll of the dice and customers still might not have the money to buy them. The way out of that hole is to get the people who stopped buying fish back buying them. It's a demand side problem and it can't be solved without getting demand back up. In that situation, steps that usually would be inflationary produce no reaction, because the problem isn't on that side.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 11, 2010 -> 10:14 PM) A drunk who killed a woman and a former head of the kkk. Nice. And they say the witch in Delaware or where ever it is isn't smart enough to be in the Senate. To be fair...former Senator Byrd founded a local chapter of the KKK with about 150 people or so in the 1940's, but he was not the national head of that organization at any point. The highest rank he achieved, according to Wikipedia, was "Exalted Cyclops". You can decide yourself whether I wrote this post to defend him or simply to use the phrase exalted cyclops.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 11, 2010 -> 02:56 PM) 50 shrimp boats in the harbor. Conditions start to deteriorate - lowered demand and/or poor conditions for fishing, doen't matter - and boats start to close up shop. The boats able to survive, in the short term, tend to play it careful, just waiting it out and trying to survive. But as more boats fail, you essentially create opportunity. Some of those surviving boats will start to make aggressive plays for more of the market share, because even when things are bad, there is still demand for shrimp, and capitalism still dictates competition to survive and thrive. This happens in every economic cycle, macro to the US or even specific to an industry. And when interest rates are insanely low, and labor easy to come by, you strike. The thing that I think counteracts your example is that the boats that are shut down can come back online at ease with just small repairs in the event that things turn around. That's the thing that prevents "aggressive plays for market share" from pushing inflation until you start running out of spare boats. There's also the bigger problem that if they produce more and go for a larger market share...they can't sell the stuff because it's contaminated by oil their customers have no more money. That continues to be the real problem...the demand side. It's not that they can't produce more, it's that they can produce plenty but can't sell it.

You know what might actually spur a playoff? TCU and Boise winding up as the only 2 undefeated teams and in the 1 and 2 BCS slots. A national championship game that draws terrible ratings and loses people money might do it

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Oct 11, 2010 -> 04:34 PM) When the Braves lose this one, it will be 6 consecutive playoff series lost by Bobby Cox. If we went back through the records...how many of those were lost to teams that had better records than the Braves?