Balta1701

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 12:52 PM) There are a total of, as I recall, two companies in the US who even do the kind of work that is required here (not talking the bank here - I mean the operator). What it SHOULD have been is entirely subjective, the reality is what someone was actually willing to pay. Do you really think the City would have not tried to get best money here? No one wins on that. By the way Balta, one of the big side effects of this over time is one I'd think you'd fall in love with. 1. I can take the same opinion as the Hudson deal here...if you're holding a possible investment vehicle, and every price that you are offered in exchange for it is a low-ball offer, then you don't make the deal. Simple arithmetic spells it out here. If I were to be holding a $1 billion investment and it returned a whopping 3% over 75 years, that would total that same $10 billion that they're saying the contract would be worth for JPM. The city basically bet that the returns on their $1 billion investment now would be 3% or less over the next 75 years. While, that may be somewhat true given the conservative economic era we're in, historically that'd be a very bad rate of return. The big side effect I'd like? Higher taxes? (Temporary stimulus now is the side effect I'd assume you're saying, but that doesn't mean it's a good investment)

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 12:32 PM) I'm not agreeing with him. For example, i doubt Microsoft would hire someone just because they read stuff on the internet about computer science. Have you tried Vista? If they'd done just that, it would have been an improvement.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 12:37 PM) I'll say it again, this deal only looks bad if you pick the gross numbers to look at. If you take it all into account, it was a good deal for the city to make, and I am saying that being one of its residents. The reason I found that version particularly interesting is that the new state estimate was that the appropriate price for that deal should have been >$2 billion.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 12:46 PM) By the way, do people think that $10B profit (over 75 or however many years it is) just gets sucked into a hole and dies? IF it's in the hands of a bank/investment firm right now...that's exactly what is happening to it.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 11:18 AM) As always, a 6 man rotation is just a terrible idea. On a 26 man roster, it could be a spectacular idea.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 10:18 AM) Wasn't the issue that the Emperor was willing to accept defeat, but the Japanese military was not? I think at that point the military leaders held the power to end the war. The Japanese military was holding out hope that through discussions with the Russians, Japan could come to a deal with the other Allies that would allow them to end the war with the single condition of retention of the Emperor. That hope ended when the Russians entered the war...but they still managed to extract the concession of Imperial retention from the Allies.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 10:14 AM) I thought Bayh uttered words FOR it And Bayh also croons about how bad the deficit is and wants to extend Bush's tax cuts. He offered up a vague critique of how bad the Senate has become when he announced his retirement and has done jack squat about it.

Prove me wrong Edwin.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 10:06 AM) If Peavy is healthy, or projected to ready by the time spring starts, I really think we see a trade of one of our starters. Regardless remember that contracts start coming up after 2011. Nothing would surprise me with Kenny...but without an obvious takeover candidate...and no, Sale doesn't count, I seriously don't expect him to make a move that makes the pitching staff worse. He might go 2007 style and do a deal that brings in significantly more young pitching, but the ideal guy to do that with is Jackson, and I still doubt that any team is going to line up to be the 4th team to trade for him in 2 years.

Bloomberg

The other thing that makes me think that is...he's not just coming back from "Family problems", we haven't seen the regularly dominant Tiger Woods since he won the U.S. open on 1 knee and then shut it down for a year for surgery.

Ted Olson and David Boies were frankly a wrecking crew on the Sunday talk shows. "A witness stand is a lonely place to lie. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost".

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 09:22 AM) It makes me really sad that this is the case, to be honest. I was really hoping that the election of Obama would bring back some shape and form of comity to Capitol Hill. I will say that the nature of the Democratic party makes a filibuster a much less likely action when it comes to judicial nominations. I think over the last twenty years of Democratic party leadership accepting the legitimacy of elections that they have lost, even when (IMO some of those elections' legitimacy has been questionable.) They may vote against confirmation, but by and large they allow cloture to happen on nomination processes. I hope that in the next Senate (which will be likely Democratic controlled, but with a much smaller 53 or 54 seat majority rather than 59 current seats), the leadership will finally get the balls to shut down the Senate on ridiculous cloture/procedural filibuster actions. It really will only take a couple weeks of that before it stops becoming a useful tool for the opposition, especially when its being used to block anything and everything. You can already see why that won't be happening. The guys who would have to vote to eliminate the filibuster are the ones who are empowered by the filibuster; anyone who would be somewhere within the vote 40-60 area is empowered massively by a 60 vote majority. Senators like like Bayh, Nelson, Feinstein, Levin, Feingold, etc., have come out against filibuster reform, and really they should; if their vote is up for grabs at all, they are massively empowered. The Dems have struggled more than the Republicans to hold together filibusters, but the Dems were at least able to hold together a few on some justices last time out, they were able to get a decent number of votes against Alito...and frankly, the precedent has now been set; the next time the Dems are in the minority in the Senate, no matter how much noise Fox News makes about how awful it is that the Republicans have a 60 vote requirement to cut taxes, the rest of the media is going to have gone years without caring. Its the same effect as how Obama's gotten away with enshrining the surveillance state; once it's been done by both sides, there's less of a reason to keep caring.

So, is Tiger Woods finished?

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Aug 8, 2010 -> 11:37 PM) I don't know, but frankly, I hope not. I really wonder if this is the last confirmed justice we'll see for a long time. We could very well be running a recess appointment supreme court from now on. When's the next time that either side will have anything close to a filibuster-proof majority?

QUOTE (lord chas @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 01:36 AM) anyone else think hes going to get himself into a big ben situation and screw himself over? Big Ben's something of a unique personality type though. Name another guy who got himself into trouble with alcohol and I'd agree. Say an upcoming DUI or something like that.

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 01:50 AM) Both cities were specifically chosen because of their high importance in war weapon production for the Japanese. However...also noteable is that those cities had been deliberately spared from the B-29 firebombing campaign that killed even more people in a 1 night raid on Tokyo than the atomic bomb did.

Teahen 0/3, continues plummetting.

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 9, 2010 -> 12:25 AM) If Teahen can wait until Aug 16, then they can 15 day-DL Kotsay with "back problems." That'd be taking out our best bat.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 8, 2010 -> 11:33 PM) Balta had some great posts in this thread IMO. I think we overpaid for a salary dump player, but hopefully Jackson will continue to do well. He did pretty well in that first start for us. No one will be happier about Jackson shutting me up than me. We really need a stopper today to avoid losing 3/4 to the lowly Orioles.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Aug 8, 2010 -> 04:10 PM) Still a game back in the loss column. I think it gives me plenty of reason to be frustrated over mistakes/poor performance in each and every single game.

QUOTE (Thunderbolt @ Aug 8, 2010 -> 04:04 PM) We traded him because Ozzie didn't like him. That whole "really bad with the bats" didn't play into it?

That's my argument.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 8, 2010 -> 04:04 PM) I can't see him going on the DL for that. A pulled groin muscle can be a horribly slow recovery.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 8, 2010 -> 04:01 PM) Something that will be frustrating is if we send Viciedo down after Monday in order to promote Teahen, even though we face two LHP during Twins series. We won't need to send Viciedo down if Beckham goes to the Dl.